About

Axios, the brainchild of Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei, is a way of delivering the news suited to people with many ways to access information and little time to read all of it. Their tag line is “short brevity” and they stay true to that. Read their mission statement here.

Because Axios does not cater to a liberal or a conservative audience but rather to the inside-the-beltway (Washington insider) reader, they cannot afford to be accused of media bias and scrupulously avoid it. On the other hand, they do not shy away from telling truths painful to either side. They produce solid journalism and while much of what they do it aggregating the reporting of others they also have excellent sources of their own. I read the news widely, and I never fail to learn something new from them.

Axios produces a number of newsletters and one of the things that is so admirable about them is that they are globally focused and oriented to the future — to the world that college students will be living and working in much longer than many of those running the country to day. Reading Axios AM (Mike Allen’s morning newsletter — sign up here) will tell you what you need to know about American politics, and browsing the other newsletters will fill you in about the world, the future, science, the media and trends you should know.

For now, Axios is free and advertiser-driven (watch carefully — the ads are so well done they can look like news stories and you can even learn from them — just beware of the source.

Really, the only downside to Axios is that that because their goal is to keep it brief and because they are writing mostly for people in the know, they assume you are aware of what is happening and have a working familiarity with American politics. If that is not the case, reading Axios can send you in circles.

What this newsletter aims to do is to provide the context in which smart brevity makes sense for those new to the news — primarily if you are a high school or college student getting your feet wet in current events but have not fully plunged into the raging stream of American politics and or if you arenew to the country who don’t have all the rules of American politics down.

This newsletter is for you. It replicates selected stories from Axios verbatim but it annotates them — that is it supplies the extra context, definition, and bits of history that Axios assumes its readers know. Soon, you will be those seasoned readers, but until you get there, The Annotated Axios is designed to bring you up to speed. It is written by me, Christine Barbour, the author of AmGov, Long Story Short, a textbook that also focuses on the power of brevity but is aware that it is written for those who are not yet familiar with American politics. This newsletter is both a supplement and a stand alone resource. The annotations that appear in red are mine alone and do not represent the interpretations, opinions, beliefs, or intentions of the Axios writers.

Note: The annotation is in red, Axios is in black.  The annotation is there to provide context and background for you to understand the Axios story. It is not providing commentary, except when it links the Axios reports to AmGov: Long Story Short.

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