I’m pretty obsessed with newsletters.
I was trying to explain to my boyfriend how newsletters are blowing up right now and they’re totally a thing, back en vogue.
He just laughed at me.
So in true snake person fashion, I went back to my desk and started plotting a listicle to prove him wrong. People love listicles. Listicles are an art form. Plus they kinda remind me of popsicles so I’m into that.
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Here’s a non-comprehensive list of newsletters that I adore, each of which has their own particular sensibility, voice, and leaves me feeling better after I finish reading it.
- Jack Cheng’s Sunday — A weekly letter that never fails to lift my spirits on Sunday evening. Jack writes about a variety of topics, each of which explore something fundamentally human: obsession, continuity, relationship with writing, different kinds of reading. They’re always signed with “Jack” in a handwritten script, which lends an air of intimacy and creates familiarity over time. I walk away from these letters wishing I could write anything half as succinct, thought-provoking, and distinct as Jack.
- The Ann Friedman Weekly — ann friedman slays the “low-maintenance ladyswagger” aesthetic. She is an amazing freelance journalist who often writes about feminism and other women’s issues. She also draws awesome pie charts. Her newsletter is a mix of things she’s written, read, watched, or listened to in the last week. My favorite section is the “gifspiration.” Ann keeps a consistent structure for her weekly newsletter, and though it does include a lot of links, she goes beyond the mere listicle (like this terrible list you’re reading now) and crafts just-cryptic-enough one-liners to link you out to articles. Subscribe now and get on her level.
- The Awl’s Everything Changes — I ❤ Laura Olin. She is brilliant and has built an amazing community with the Everything Changes newsletter. As the name suggests, the format and content of this newsletter changes every week, and it’s been really cool to watch Laura experiment with this space. Part of what makes this so delightful is the element of surprise. She’s crowdsourced advice from readers on “how to be good,” organized a monster advice exchange, and has a never ending supply of motivational corgis. It’s truly a participatory community of subscribers.
- Uncommon in Common — Uncommon describes itself as an online community for kind and curious people, a front porch for the Internet. They focus on sharing thoughtful, meaningful interaction and bringing people together to shape small things on the internet. It’s a refreshing break from the tired narrative of “huge” that dominates so much of the web. Their newsletter varies in frequency, dispatching snapshots of their community as it evolves. It always ends with a Prompted section that includes answers from members to a question posed in the last missive. What’s your favorite morning routine? What were your favorite toys growing up?
- BuzzFeed News — This is one of the first newsletters I read every morning after I wake up. It’s a comprehensive editorial product that does a great job of catching me up on the news for the day. The format is consistent, which helps to create a good routine over time and set expectations for what I’ll get out of it. It’s chunked into conversational sections, like “We’re keeping on eye on” and “Did you hear about this?” The newsletter always closes out strong with some gifspiration or a funny, delightful image to put you in the right mood for the day.
- Quartz Daily Brief — Quartz’s daily newsletter is a shining star example I always point to when talking about newsletters. It’s clearly written by humans, which makes a big difference in building a strong connection and trust with an editorial brand over time. This is another thing I read on in the morning on my commute to work. I particularly enjoy their Surprising discoveries and Matters of debate. The links in Quartz’s newsletter are mostly external, which for me as a reader inspires confidence in the material presented — it makes the content feel more comprehensive, like Quartz’s editors are helping me sift through the wild, untamed streams of the web and giving me the best stuff.
- Lenny Letter — Lena Dunham’s new project with her producer from Girls, Jenni Konner. Took me a while to catch onto the fact that “Lenny” is a portmanteau of Lena and Jenni. They interview boss ass bitches like HRC and Gloria Steinem and take selfies with them. Jennifer Lawrence took on the question of why her male co-stars make more than her. Lenny launched exclusively for the inbox, though now the website also has content. They started with a newsletter in order to create a safe space, according to Dunham, a space to channel the feeling of the “slow internet,” trying to offer a breath of fresh air and escape from the overwhelming sensation of the web’s content cycles. A quiet place for women to immerse themselves in issues of feminism, style, health, friendship, and everything in between, in all of their contradictions and complexities.
- Alexis C. Madrigal’s Real Future — Formerly known as “5 Intriguing Things,” Real Future is curated by Alexis Madrigal (of Atlantic and Fusion fame) that are simply five small things and oddities from the past or future. See: UAVs flying at 30 mph, avoiding obstacles with the computing power of a cell phone.
- Farnam Street Brain Food — The theme for Shane Parrish’s weekly Sunday newsletter is “mind-expanding content” and stuff to make you smarter. Lots of good book recommendations and quotes distilled from smart thinkers and writers from around the web.
- NYT’s What We’re Reading — A nice collection of stories from around the web, collected by a rotating cast of NYT staffers. They do a great job crafting the blurbs for each link, which can serve either as a good sell for reading the whole thing, but also give you enough context to satiate your curiosity if you’re in a hurry.
- Lefsetz Letter — While billed as the “first in music analysis,” Lefsetz takes on way more than just music. It’s a unique oped that mixes analysis, rants, rock musings, tech commentaries. “No one at “Grantland” could make it run without Bill Simmons… NO ONE! And Apple can’t seem to come up with a new hit product without Steve Jobs. And there’s only one Adele. Distribution is king. If you can’t see or hear it, it doesn’t exist. But distribution without talent is a complete failure. Talent first, never forget it.” Lefsetz writes whatever’s on his mind, punctuating his manifestos with sporadic caps lock.
- Nieman Lab Daily — Very media insidery, but I’m a wannabe media elite and Nieman gets that, so if you have even the vaguest media ambitions this is a newsletter to get in on. The newsletter is a combination of original reporting, what Nieman staff is reading, and other links surfaced by Fuego, their “heat-seeking Twitter bot.”
- This Nightly — This.cm is a link sharing site where members can only contribute 1 link every day. They wanted to build a place to celebrate the web’s “most ambitious and diverse and weird media.” So, obviously I’m in. Their nightly newsletter includes five picks from the editors that were shared on the site that day, which, if you think about it, is the crème de la crème de la crème, since members can only share one thing, and then the editors pick from those. Each link has a short, witty blurb and tells you who it’s shared by — a nice way to reinforce the network and promote people who share the trillest shit.
Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this:
I’m starting a casual newsletter with short thoughts, essays, and other things I find interesting (books, TV, podcasts…) Subscribe if that’s ur thing.
