Wednesday, June 3, 2026
As we know in the world of Days, no one is gone forever. There's always the cryo chamber, Melaswen, Versavix, the brainwashing arc that turns out to have been a decade-long Stefano project. So I won't insult you by pretending this is goodbye.
But The Salem Dispatch is going on hiatus, starting now. I don't have a return date. The honest version: a daily newsletter takes a kind of bandwidth I can't keep giving it alongside the rest of my life, and the version that would make it work would require numbers that aren't here yet.
I started working on this newsletter in March, after I got tired of fake-out-news stories about Days on Facebook, speculative spoilers that never end up happening, and websites where I have to hit the “x” mark on fifteen ads before I can actually read the story. I wanted to give you something you could depend on that would land in your inbox every day and be, as one reader called it, “the one place to go for everything DOOL.” And I feel proud of what I was able to produce.
I know seven weeks isn't a fair trial by most standards. I'm not stopping because it didn't work. I'm stopping because I can see the shape of what would make it work, and that shape requires money and time I don't have right now. But I do hope to resume sometime in the future, and I’ve got great ideas up my sleeve.
A few things you should know. The archive stays up. You stay subscribed unless you opt out. If I ever come back (which I really do hope to do), this is where you'll hear it first. I will still be watching the show every day, as I have every day since I was five years old, and I will occasionally share my thoughts on The Salem Dispatch Facebook page (check there for the results of yesterday’s poll) and create new trivia quizzes when I have time to do so. Hey, I’ve got to let my frustration about this Lexie storyline out somewhere.
Thank you to all of you for reading - to those of you who have been reading every day since day one, and to the three of you who just subscribed yesterday. This has really been a labor of love, and writing for you has been a highlight of my weekdays for the last few months.
My full intention is to follow in the footsteps of Marlena, Hope, Steve, Jack, Bo, Roman, Will, Megan, Tony, Andre, and of course, Stefano, and to have a second act. And I trust DOOL fans, of all people, to appreciate what I’m saying: no one on this show ever really leaves.
With deep gratitude,
Michael