Wiczipedia is becoming The Wayfinder 🧭

Your guide to our toxic information landscape

Hard at work on an issue of Wiczipedia at Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s campaign headquarters, April 2019. Photo by Pete Kiehart.

Wiczi-history

I started the first incarnation of Wiczipedia over 11 years ago. I was in my mid-twenties and a program officer at the National Democratic Institute, focusing day in and day out on the political, social, and economic minutiae of a bunch of countries many Americans probably could not find on a map, but fascinated me.

I missed writing. My job had some of it—reports and proposals written in dry government-speak—but nothing creative or public-facing. So in fall 2014, I started a roundup of the news in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Eurasia, named after my Twitter avatar, a pun on my last name (wiczipedia...wikipedia...get it?).

The Wiczipedia Weekly—tagline: “news and analysis from places where people know how to pronounce my name”—was born, and my readership comprised two or three hundred colleagues and friends in Washington.

When I moved to Kyiv two years later, the Weekly continued with a focus on Ukraine, and I kept it going while I worked on How to Lose the Information War. I moved it to Substack, then a brand new platform among newsletter services and social media writ large, in 2019, when I returned to Ukraine to report on the presidential election. As the pandemic hit, my focus broadened beyond Eastern Europe, and I began to write about things closer to home.

Life got more complex—another book, a short-lived government job that resulted in a nationwide hate campaign, a baby—and the Wiczipedia Weekly became the Wiczipedia Sporadically.

From those humble beginnings—and irregular continuings—thousands of you have invited me into your inboxes. Thank you.

Charting a new course

As I reflected on the decade-plus I’ve been writing this little missive and thought about 2026, I felt like my newsletter needed a fresh coat of paint. The aperture of my work has widened, and so has my audience. This isn’t a solely a wonky newsletter with a regional focus; the punny title doesn’t really describe what I do here these days. (But I’ll take the screen name to my grave, don’t worry!)

In 2026, I want to use this space to help you navigate our polluted information environment. That has already meant explainers on some of the more niche authoritarian moves the Trump administration is attempting (like its plan to doxx journalists, civil society activists, and employees who worked on countering disinformation) and essays on the overlooked harms of AI. But you’ve also told me (yes, I read your replies to my emails!) that you want to go back to basics. What is disinformation? How can you spot it? What about AI generated images and videos? And what can we learn from countries that are definitely, definitely, doing this better than the U.S. is?

So I’m retiring the Wiczipedia brand, with gratitude for her service, and saying hello to The Wayfinder, a guide to getting your footing in a toxic information landscape.

The Wayfinder will explain the worst of the internet and teach you how to avoid it. Through weekly essays and interviews, I’ll also highlight bright spots from around the world. Once a month, I’ll send out an advice column—think “Dear Abby” for disinformation and digital harms—where I’ll answer your questions. You can submit a question here:

Like Wiczipedia, The Wayfinder’s public interest analysis will be free for everyone to read, but paid subscriptions help me keep it that way.

I look forward to bringing you the first edition of The Wayfinder in January. I hope it will be content that helps you find your way through this crazy world we inhabit.

In the meantime, you might notice things changing and moving around here—a new domain, new logo, new logo...and likely some broken links.

Thanks for your patience, and for being along for the ride.

-NJ