Most of you reading this newsletter didn’t know Blake Hounshell, but all
of you were influenced by him.

He nurtured and mentored dozens of young journalists who now populate
virtually every significant news organization. He plucked brilliant
academics from obscurity and turned them into influential writers. He
shaped the world of online political news, newsletters and social media
for over a decade at Foreign Policy, POLITICO and The New York Times. He
put together the current incarnation of Playbook. He helped create
POLITICO Magazine. He taught beat reporters how to become longform
storytellers. He relentlessly spotted and recruited new talent. He was a
terrific reporter with a rare breadth of knowledge — just go read his
archive of stories over the last two years at the Times.

“Blake had lots of insights,” our Sam Stein noted to us last night. “And
observations. And advice. He was informed but inquisitive; hyperactive
but not overbearing. Those were qualities that made him a great editor. 

“What made him a brilliant one was that he loved to stir up shit. When …
he hired me for the role of White House editor, he said he was eager to
cause ‘some good trouble.’ He loved to push the envelope. He wanted to
build: stories and newsrooms and products. And he did. Great ones. What
a wonderful legacy to leave.”

We lost Blake yesterday. It was sudden and baffling. His friends were
texting and emailing with him — about dinner plans and story ideas and a
new class he was set to teach at NYU. He was tweeting. And then he was
gone. He committed suicide after a long struggle with depression. 

Blake was a singular figure in Washington journalism, and we asked those
who knew Blake best to share some remembrances of him. We were
ultimately overwhelmed by the extraordinary array of Playbookers whose
lives he had touched — so many, in fact, that we’re hard-pressed to
share them all here. Uncut, those tributes run to 13 pages, and we’d
love to hear more still: playbook@politico.com. 

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Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook
Daily Briefing.
Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.