About Cloak and State

Power is rarely exercised in public. Its consequences are.

Cloak and State is an independent media company covering the people, institutions, money, culture and relationships that shape public life.

We are interested in more than what happened.

We want to know who made it happen, who benefited, who was in the room, who wasn't—and what happens next.

Our journalism lives at the intersection of politics, power, culture, money and society because those worlds have never existed separately. Elections are influenced by money. Policy is shaped by relationships. Culture determines whose voices carry weight. Social institutions create access. And sometimes the most consequential decisions are made long before the public knows there was a decision to make.

Cloak and State was created to examine that ecosystem.

We cover political power without treating politics as theater. We cover money without pretending wealth exists apart from influence. We cover culture as a force capable of moving institutions, elections and markets. And we cover society not simply by documenting who is in the room, but by asking why that room matters.

There will be reporting. There will be interviews. There will be analysis. There will be profiles of people worth knowing before everyone else knows their names.

And there will occasionally be a raised eyebrow at the people who have become far too comfortable believing no one is paying attention.

We are paying attention.

POWER

The people, institutions and decisions shaping government and public life—and the machinery operating behind them.

MONEY

Where capital meets access, ambition and influence. The people making it, moving it, giving it away and using it to change what happens next.

CULTURE

The people, ideas and institutions defining what matters before the rest of the world catches up. Culture isn't the conversation after power moves. Often, it's where power begins.

SOCIETY

The rooms where relationships become influence. Philanthropy, institutions, civic life, social networks and the people whose connections quietly help shape cities and communities.

THE EDITOR

Jacquetta Van Zandt is the founder and editor of Cloak and State.

A Boston political strategist, commentator and civic leader, Van Zandt has spent her career close enough to politics and institutions to understand that the public story and the complete story are not always the same thing.

Her work has taken her through campaigns, government, advocacy, civic institutions and political media, giving her a firsthand understanding of the ecosystem surrounding power: the relationships, ambitions, personalities and institutions that determine who gets heard, who gets access and, ultimately, who gets to make decisions.

She created Cloak and State to build the kind of publication she wanted to read—politically intelligent without being consumed by politics, culturally literate without chasing trends, interested in wealth without worshipping it, and sophisticated enough to understand that sometimes the guest list tells you as much about power as the podium does.

Cloak and State begins in Boston, but its ambitions do not end there.

This is a publication about how power actually moves.

And we're just getting started.