About Spin Class

Welcome to Spin Class, where we look at politics, policy, and culture through a comms lens. I’m Emily, and I’m glad you’re here.

I started Spin Class because I wanted a place that talked about comms and media as most of us actually experience them today: through a flood of channels but still in bubbles, curated by both powerful humans and algorithms (with their own agendas), and refusing to stay squarely in any one vertical or topic.

Spin Class asks why we’re seeing what we’re seeing, what’s the backstory, how are people in power are advancing an agenda or selling you something. We also interview people shaking things up in comms and news and go deeper on history, theory, and case studies. And there’s plenty of dumb memes and em-dashes (when your host is an elderly Millennial mom this is actually legally required).

Who is Spin Class for?

We have plenty of red meat for communications and media professionals, but Spin Class is for anyone who is curious about the news, how we make it, and how we process it. After all, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to be interested in space.

About Emily

I’ve been in Washington, DC for over 20 years as a White House and State Department spokesperson, running Twitter’s policy comms in the aftermath of the 2016 election, and working at various DC think tanks. When I was President Biden’s National Security Council spokesperson I helped design and execute the strategy to declassify and publicly share Russia’s plots to invade Ukraine. Today I’m a consultant and professor of media and foreign policy. My clients know I will not approve a comms plan that includes "the general public" as a target audience.

Join In!

My favorite question is “what are we not talking about that we should be talking about?” Comment, send me ideas, raise topics for us to cover. Good comms should be a conversation, not a presentation.

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