The Stripe engineer who created a bespoke newsletter platform in his free time talks about the paradox at the heart of the passion economy. — A song to read by: “Small Town Talk,” by Bobby Charles What I’m reading: “Conflict Is Not Abuse,” by Sarah Schulman The newsletter platforms runneth over While researching a story about newsletters for Business Insider the other week, I discovered that there is a truly gobsmacking number of newsletter platforms on the market. …

When your fans pay your bills, that’s called being uncancel-able, baby. — A song to read by: “Doc” by Chocolate Milk What I’m reading: “Conflict Is Not Abuse,” by Sarah Schulman New York Times media critic Ben Smith has written a lot of sentences that have made him a lot of enemies, but perhaps the most gut-curdling noun-verb construction he’s ever stitched…

Why remote positions need to become a fixture in the journalism industry long after they are required by Covid. — A song to read by: “Drift Away,” by Dobie Gray What I’m reading: “Are Prisons Obsolete?” by Angela Davis A remote playing field In early August, the news broke that NPR had received 20,520 applications for its 27 available internship positions; the year prior, there had been 2,597 applications for 55 jobs. …

How a Current Affairs article broke my thought-having device (brian?). — A song to read by: “My Own Worst Enemy,” by Lit What I’m reading: “Are Prisons Obsolete?” by Angela Davis You can’t compete with cheap labor Current Affairs’ editor Nathan J. Robinson published “ The Truth is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free “ almost two weeks ago, and it gave a good shake to the…

The cofounder of the Oakland-based “Hometown” is at work on what could be a paradigm shift in the way people consume news. — A song to read by: “What a Difference a Day Makes,” by Dinah Washington What I’m reading: “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” by Malcolm X and Alex Haley I met Ljuba Youngblom last fall, when my tiny graduate school cohort of 10 people decamped to San Francisco for a quarter…

Media coverage of Hillary Clinton was awash in sexist tropes. In 2020, with a biracial woman on the ticket, it’s imperative we do better. — A song to read by: “Strange Overtones,” by Whitney What I’m reading: “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” by Malcolm X and Alex Haley We’re not in 2016 anymore Regardless of your political inclinations, the selection of Sen. Kamala Harris as the vice presidential nominee of the Democratic Party is historic.

After quitting Deadspin en masse, Burneko and 17 of his colleagues reemerged last week as Defector Media, a sports blog with a sharp voice and perfect timing. — Good morning, readers of the Lyte, and welcome to another edition of the only newsletter that, when printed and folded into a paper airplane, is guaranteed to fly. Let’s get our brains into Having Thoughts mode. Today’s interview is with Albert Burneko, one of the 18 Deadspin writers who quit…

This time, the misinformation will come in picture format. — Data deja vu If your Instagram looks anything like mine does nowadays, it might remind you of what your Facebook looked like in 2016: packed with social justice rhetoric, instructions for civic engagement, grassroots activism and indictments of the state. Just about everyone I follow has dramatically amped up the number of socially…

First The Dispatch, then Study Hall, then Discourse Blog and now Defector: Creative teams of writers are building exciting new sites on the backs of subscriptions. — Welcome to the world, Defector Media Earlier this week, a new media company named Defector Media announced itself to the Twitterati. Next week I’ll be interviewing one of its founding members, so I’ll save the in-depth description till then.