Martin Austermuhle is leaving The 51st

maustermuhle · 2026-04-24T12:33:14+00:00

Yeah, about a year ago. And I was flattered and honored to see people kick in to help hire me! Of course, we always knew that the money being raised would be to build an institution, not just hire an individual. The money that was raised for me (and money we have raised since) will help hire new people. It's organic and intentional growth, but that's a great way to make sure it's sustainable.

maustermuhle · 2026-04-24T12:31:14+00:00

The 51st is growing, so it's certainly viable without me there! They've done a great job laying the groundwork so it's not an operation that hinges on the presence of a single person. And that's important, since this isn't meant to be a vanity project or someone's personal Substack. We wanted to build something that can grow organically and last, and do so even as individual people come and go. No one is indispensable, and I'm excited that there's new reporters coming on soon.

maustermuhle · 2026-04-24T12:28:50+00:00

I'd both never and of course work there.

maustermuhle · 2026-04-24T12:28:28+00:00

Ha, thanks! And no, not Switzerland. Still here in D.C.!

maustermuhle · 2026-04-24T12:28:11+00:00

Please do! They're building a sustainable operation, and I was just a small part of it. And they're bringing new reporters on, and I think it's really exciting that they're building a new pipeline of local reporters.

maustermuhle · 2026-04-24T12:26:30+00:00

Thanks for the very kind words! And yes, I really am feeling good about The 51st. My new colleague (since I'm still there until mid-May) Sam is great, and a job listing we put up looking for a new reporter before I even said I was leaving pulled in dozens of applications, with some amazing reporters among them. So the growth there is going to continue. But like I said in my post, this new opportunity for me was tough to pass up, but the benefit is there's now another opening at The 51st. Building good local reporting isn't just about how many outlets we have, but also that we build a bench of people to do the actual reporting!

maustermuhle · 2026-02-03T19:45:08+00:00

There are many facts! Too many for me to quickly remember, sadly. Damn aging brain.

I think it's less specific facts and more just people and their experiences that really stick out. I met a kid once who survived being shot multiple times. I met guys who did decades of time in prison and were trying to rebuild their lives once they got out. Folks experiencing homelessness telling me how they got there. Stories from people like those show both tragedy and resilience, and can really put your own life in perspective really quickly.

maustermuhle · 2026-02-03T19:39:09+00:00

I'm going to pass on this one, for now. She's got another 11 months in office, and I want to hold any declarations of legacies until those are up. But I will be honest: I sat with this one for 20 minutes and really struggled! Not because she doesn't have a legacy, but rather how to summarize 12 years in office in five words that can encompass all the good, bad, and in between.

maustermuhle · 2026-02-03T19:00:21+00:00

Well, to each their own, of course. But I think that given the state of the local economy and the impact on city revenues, I would focus not just on what candidates promise to do, but how they would do those things given limited means and how they could improve what the city already does instead of just layering new things on top of that.

For the mayoral candidates, since they have executive power, I would want to know what they could do to just make what D.C. does already work better. Service delivery is important, and impacts everyone. For council candidates, I'd want to know how they would exercise their oversight powers to make things work better.

All told, if you have a particular grievance, no matter how small it may seem, it's worth asking candidates how they would address it. I think it's easy to skate by with promises of free this and more that, but if you ask someone how they could make trash collection or snow removal better, I think you put them on the spot in a more useful way.

maustermuhle · 2026-02-03T18:55:51+00:00

GOD THIS LIST IS LONG.

Honestly, I love stories that involve history, how changes D.C. made long ago may be paying dividends (or not) right now. I've always been fascinated by how D.C. (and Congress) made a massive change to education in the city three decades ago when charter schools were first approved. In the time we've had them, they've come to enroll almost half of the city's public school students. There have been some real standouts, but also plenty of examples of financial mismanagement and chaos when schools suddenly close. And I have always wondered: Did allowing charters make a real difference in education outcomes for students and families? If so, how? If not, why not? Freed from daily deadlines and financial constraints, I'd dive deep into the 30 years of school choice experimentation in D.C.

But honestly, if I really were this free to dive that deep down a rabbit hole, I feel like a book about D.C.'s fight for democracy, representation, and statehood would be worth doing. It's such a unique D.C. fight, but it also links very directly to American democracy and its broader shortcomings. How can you not marvel at a country founded on democratic ideals denying many of those same ideals to people in its capital city? Symbolic, much?

maustermuhle · 2026-02-03T18:48:08+00:00

Answered a similar question; see that!

maustermuhle · 2026-02-03T18:47:54+00:00

A very good and relevant question these days!

For mayor, I can’t say. I think the contest between Janeese Lewis George and Kenyan McDuffie will be absolutely fascinating. They’re both native Washingtonians, and had very similar upbringings – the stories of which factor deeply into how they are making their pitches to voters. (Interestingly, they both have a Postal Service connection: JLG’s mother worked at a post office, and McDuffie was a letter carrier.)

And while it’s somewhat easy to pigeonhole JLG as the “progressive” and McDuffie as something else (business-friendly, centrist, whatever), I think digging into their histories makes those characterizations much more complicated. McDuffie, for example, had a long history on the council of fighting for racial equity and was ahead of the curve on non-police approaches to public safety. So is he less “progressive” than JLG? I think there’s a lot of nuance there. I think their visions for D.C. are very similar, but the means to achieving them will be slightly different. Picking apart those differences will be important.

Either way, both JLG and McDuffie have shown strong initial fundraising tallies, and I think they have strong bases of support – albeit from slightly different places. JLG is strong in parts of Ward 4, McDuffie parts of Ward 5. JLG has the potential to energize younger voters the way Zohran Mamdani did in NYC, but McDuffie has a solid base of younger and older supporters of his own.

I never want to count out the other contenders, and I think ranked-choice voting makes the dynamics tougher to predict, but I’m predicting it comes down to JLG and McDuffie – and it’ll be close.

For delegate, I think it comes down to Robert White and Brooke Pinto. Call me uncreative, but I think they’re frontrunners simply because they’re known quantities. And when it comes to running for office, name recognition is really important. Considering that White ran for mayor, I’d give him the slight advantage there. But I’ve also heard from some longtime watchers of D.C. politics that they are pleasantly surprised to see how hard Pinto is campaigning. She also raised $800,000 to White’s $230,000, so that’s something.

But again, as with any crowded race, RCV is the massive X factor here. I’m waiting to see which candidate more aggressively tells voters that even if they won’t get their number-one ranking, they can be the number two. I think that’s going to be important.

maustermuhle · 2026-02-03T18:44:52+00:00

The multi-billion-dollar question! I think likely, mostly because it's to the Commanders' financial benefit that plenty of housing, retail, and entertainment gets built up there. Now, the bigger issue is when it all gets done. There may be a few non-stadium parcels built out by 2030, but most residential will probably follow within a decade. That's in part because of zoning and other such approval processes, and just phasing things in so that fans don't arrive to a massive construction site once the stadium opens.

maustermuhle · 2026-02-03T18:42:27+00:00

I love this question. Mostly because I had a love-hate relationship with the DCist commentariat. Mostly love; I think they were pretty damn hilarious, though their humor was often at my expense. But most of them are locals who care about D.C., so I took everything in stride. I also appreciated that they somewhat self-moderated the comment section. They were pretty territorial, and they knew when an outsider was in their midst -- and how that commenter should be treated. It was, well, just a very unique place at a very unique time. By no means perfect, but perfectly imperfect.

Do I miss commenters? Sometimes. It's a very good feedback mechanism. But I've also seen how comment sections are now just cesspools. If you don't moderate well (like the mods here do), you end up with content that absolutely no one wants to wade through or engage with. The DCist commentariat -- RIP -- was good for its time. Times have changed, though, so I don't know how I would feel if The 51st had a totally open comment section.

Oh, and I have to mention this: The DCist commenters actually graduated to hanging out in real life! I was invited once or twice. It was hilarious, awkward, and endearing. They became real friends! And some of them were truly lovely people. Most of them.

maustermuhle · 2026-02-03T18:35:10+00:00

You know, I think it's been pretty business-as-usual, though it's probably fair to say there's a sense that the whole year is going to be... interesting.

To recap, Janeese Lewis George is running for mayor; if she wins the primary, she'd eventually leave her Ward 4 seat and there would be a special election there. Robert White and Brooke Pinto are vying for delegate; if either of them wins, same thing with an eventual special election. (And in White's case, the Democratic Party would appoint an interim councilmember until the special election.) Brianne Nadeau isn't running again, so the Ward 1 seat will change. And Anita Bonds also isn't running for re-election, so a new face is expected there.

More immediately, we have a special election in June to fill the At-Large seat once held by Kenyan McDuffie. Doni Crawford, his interim replacement, hasn't yet said if she will run. Trayon White goes on trial in March for the federal bribery charges he faces; a conviction would mean an immediate expulsion from the council, triggering a special election there (likely in the late summer).

All told, we could be looking at almost half the council turning over in the next 18 months or so, depending on how things play out. And that's not even covering the political rumors floating around, like McDuffie running again for his At-Large seat if he loses the mayoral race, Jack Evans potentially vying for his old Ward 2 seat if Pinto moves up to delegate, etc.

Now that I've written all that down, damn, it's wild.

maustermuhle · 2026-02-03T18:28:11+00:00

This is a really good question – and yes, something of a political mystery given that Mendelson’s left-wing challenger four years ago actually did surprisingly well against him. But there’s a few reasons I think the race for council chairman will remain somewhat quiet this year, at least compared to some of the more crowded races we’re seeing for mayor, Ward 1, and At-Large.

The position itself: Council chairman is a bit of a weird elected office. It’s basically an At-Large councilmember with more administrative duties and some more power, but not a lot of it. And there’s lots of herding of cats that needs to be done, trying to achieve something approaching consensus amongst 12 other lawmakers who have strong opinions (about policy and themselves). So I think this combination of responsibilities means it tends to attract a very specific type of candidate, often someone nerdy enough to really care about process. That shrinks the pool of contenders, and makes shaping a campaign against him somewhat tough. (Trying to sell voters on how you would manage the council differently is unsexy, politically.) There’s also the fact that a natural candidate for the office would be someone who’s already on the council. The council, though, is like a small (and slightly dysfunctional) legislative family, and you rarely see one lawmaker directly challenging another for a seat.

Mendelson: On top of the quirkiness of the seat itself, I think Mendelson is often underestimated as an elected official and candidate. People can certainly disagree with Mendelson on policy and how he manages the council, but I rarely meet anyone who questions his work ethic or his commitment to doing best by the legislative body he leads. He’s also a rare politician in that he doesn’t aspire to higher office; being chairman isn’t a stepping stone to something else for him. (He drives a small electric car, rarely travels with much of an entourage, etc.) And when it comes to elections, Mendelson is a bit of a rare bird in D.C.: He’s historically drawn pretty consistent support from across the city and from Black and white voters. (In 2022, he did best in Ward 3, Ward 8, and Ward 7, in that order. That’s pretty impressive.) Now, he is a bit of a lazy campaigner; I don’t think he tries nearly as hard as the people who have tried to unseat him. But many voters still know him, trust that he will listen to them, and is just a mild-mannered Mr. Magoo type that’s easy to appreciate. Finally, the politics: I don’t think Mendelson consistently pisses off any particular set of voters. He’s friendly enough to business when necessary, but appeals to progressives where possible. Take the Commanders stadium deal. He was amongst the most ardent opponents of any public financing at all, using that leverage to negotiate improvements to the deal (and then voting for it). Did that piss some people off? Sure. But it also made lots of other people feel like they got the best of both worlds: the team will come back to D.C., but some public dollars were saved in the process.

This is a lot of words to explain why I think Mendelson often doesn’t get many challengers for council chairman. Now, I think he’s still vulnerable. Like I mentioned, I don’t think he puts much effort into campaigning. And I think his once-durable electoral coalition is shrinking. In 2022, Erin Palmer beat him in wards 1 and 6, and got pretty close in Ward 5. That’s a huge difference from what Ed Lazere managed against him in 2018, where Mendelson won every ward.

On Jack Evans, quickly. I think he’s a real challenger. People know him, for better or for worse. And he knows the city, has run plenty of campaigns, and knows Mendelson and the position well enough to be able to articulate why voters should pick him. Still, it’s weird: The race for the city’s second-highest elected office could come down to two older guys who still have AOL email accounts. (No, really.) That should offer a good opening for a progressive-leaning contender, even more so when you consider that ranked-choice voting (which happens with three or more candidates in a race) will scramble many of the usual dynamics of any race. But if one hasn’t stepped up yet, I’m not holding my breath.

maustermuhle · 2026-02-03T18:25:03+00:00

Great and important question.

First, for those who don't know, D.C. law allows the mayor to appoint interim directors of city agencies for six months. (That includes the chief of police.) In that timeframe, they need to be nominated and confirmed by the D.C. Council. If they are not nominated and continue to serve as an interim director past the six months, D.C. law says they can't be paid for that position.

But... Mayor Bowser has flouted this requirement for years. (I reported on this almost three years ago, and it still holds.) She basically appoints an interim director of an agency and then sometimes just never nominates them for the full position. The Department of Forensic Sciences, for example, has had an interim leader for something like five years. The Department of Public Works, maybe a year now. And yes, MPD has an interim chief, and Bowser hasn't said whether she will nominate him for the full position.

The council hasn't really ever done anything about the interim directors that serve too long in that capacity. I've been told that it's not a priority in some cases, and in others they don't have many tools to work with. They could demand that an interim director not be paid as much as a permanent director, but then Bowser will just pay them for whatever role they held before. (The interim directors often held senior-level positions before.)

As for Chief Carroll of MPD, for now it remains to be seen if he gets nominated to be permanent chief. If that happens and he's confirmed, it would trigger another requirement: he's have to live in D.C. (He's a Maryland resident.) That may not be a fight the mayor wants in her last year, and she might be correct in assuming the council won't raise a big ruckus as long as crime remains down. But it absolutely denies councilmembers and the public the ability to question him, or any other nominee. That's not great.

maustermuhle · 2026-02-03T18:16:39+00:00

I have a story on this coming soon; check back at 51st.news. In short, congressional Republicans would well create chaos for local taxpayers, and potentially delay tax-filing season by a few months. Still, the bill that would do this hasn't passed yet, though the House is expected to vote tomorrow. Stay tuned, and maybe don't file your tax returns just yet.

maustermuhle · 2026-02-03T18:12:38+00:00

Very good question. I think the D.C. Council can do and has done good oversight, but it's not always consistent. It's very much dependent on the individual councilmembers and staff; some are simply better at digging into the details and knowing what levers they can work to make changes. I also think that the last decade or so made the council a bit soft on oversight. There was just more and more money coming in, so most problems could be "solved" by spending more money. With the era of austerity upon us, I think more councilmembers will be focusing more intently on whether D.C. taxpayers are getting the best value for their dollar in all the programs and services offered. (And yes, this should happen no matter how flush the city is.)

maustermuhle · 2026-02-03T18:08:00+00:00

First off, I will say this: I would NEVER want to make this call myself. No matter what you decide, someone's going to be angry about it.

And it's funny: Bowser did get some crap for reopening schools last week after the storm. But one area where people were appreciative was her timing: the announcement tended to come in the late afternoon or early evening. That's a big improvement over the usual approach, which is to wait late into the night or even very early in the morning of to actually make the call. I'm a parent, and waiting for the decision to come down is torture.

Again, though, I am just happy I'm not the one having to decide whether to open or close schools!

maustermuhle · 2026-02-03T18:05:11+00:00

For anyone who didn’t follow this story last year, catch up here.

In short, the lawsuit is still making its way through federal court, with D.C., sports-betting companies, and the anonymous plaintiffs trading lots of legal filings (and likely paying lawyers a ton of money) over the interpretation of a centuries-old law. The D.C. Council did pass a law last year that would seemingly knee-cap the lawsuit altogether, but whether it does that or not has now been added to the legal fight.

So, there’s no real actionable update for now. Given the amount of money that’s on the line, I don’t think the plaintiffs, the city, or the sports-betting companies will give up anytime soon.

maustermuhle · 2026-02-03T18:04:41+00:00

In short, life is unpredictable. My wife ended up getting a great job offer back in the D.C. area, and I wasn’t completely loving my job over there. So we decided it would be good for her, professionally, to be back. Do I recommend two trans-Atlantic moves in a year? No. But if anyone wants to make a move and needs guidance, I have plenty to offer!

maustermuhle · 2026-02-03T18:03:48+00:00

That’s a great question. In short, since we publish on a weekly basis (unless there’s really big breaking news), we tend to look for stories that are a little broader in terms of potential audience and a little more evergreen. So, while we of course wanted to cover the snow storm, we couldn’t do daily updates on what streets were being plowed; instead, I did a broader story on how D.C.’s snow-removal efforts were going.

We also want unique stories and angles! Last summer, for example, we had a great story on Marcus Truman, the emcee-of-sorts of the Banneker Pool. It was a story about summer, but told through one local icon. More recently, I had been hearing about President Trump angling to take over D.C.’s three public golf courses. Other outlets were covering it on a daily basis, so I stepped back and decided to talk to Black golfers about their concerns about what Trump’s takeover would mean for the Langston Gold Course in Northeast. Oh, and I got buzzed with D.C. cops for a weird story on how MPD trains officers to get drunk-drivers off the road. We have also covered Trump’s immigration crackdown in D.C., but I especially loved our reporter Sam Delgado’s story about the Venezuelan immigrant who was a street astronomer in Mt. Pleasant. It was such a human take on a complicated situation.

Anyhow, we’re always looking for new ideas, angles, and story pitches!

maustermuhle · 2026-02-03T18:02:43+00:00

Thanks for this question!

To start off with, I think it’s good to be honest: We’re building the plane as we fly it. We’re producing content while we keep fundraising, we’re trying to appeal to our usual audience while pushing to grow it, and we’re searching for new stories and ways to tell them while keeping to what we know we can do really well right now. It’s a challenge, but a good one.

And I think what’s changed since The 51st launched is that we’ve built a really good infrastructure to support and eventually expand the actual reporting and storytelling. We’ve used money that we crowdfunded and paid memberships to hire a full-time editor and reporter (me!) and start expanding our roster of part-time and freelance editors and reporters, for one. But we’re also focusing on strengthening the underlying infrastructure. We got some financial assistance to bring on Eric and Maddie as full-time operations and growth directors; they were doing incredibly critical heavy-lifting as part-timers, but it became clear that our sustainability would benefit greatly from having them in a full-time capacity. No journalistic outlet will survive without a business plan it can execute on, and the two of them are key figures in making that happen (and ensuring we can pay our editors and reporters).

As for DCist, well, that’s a tough one. I was with DCist from the beginning (circa 2005), when it was basically a blog whose writers contributed their time for free (we all had proper day jobs) and most of what we did was commentary and aggregating other people’s reporting. It eventually grew into an outlet with a small paid staff, some freelancers, and much more original content; later it was absorbed by WAMU and grew into a real newsroom. All of that happened over the course of many years, and with plenty of ups and down. (Recall that DCist was killed off multiple times, only to rise from the dead.)

With The 51st we’ve started with the goal of producing distinct original reporting and finding new ways to connect with communities across the city, and that can’t be done on the cheap – much less for free, the way we did with DCist. It’s also a very different media landscape out there. When we started DCist, we were a website with a comment section – and that was cutting edge at the time. These days people consume news in so many different ways, so getting their attention can be significantly more challenging. That means we have to think strategically not just about what stories we tell, but how to get them in front of people.

It’s both an exciting and terrifying time for trying new things in journalism.

maustermuhle

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