I’m Worried About Newsletters.

There are very few ideal “future of journalism” scenarios right now.

Robots doing all the journalism is one potential ‘not ideal’ future.

Another not-ideal journalism future: a few large companies controlling all major media outlets.

That one, of course, is also the present of journalism, which isn’t ideal either.

While massive layoffs in media at the whim of a few not-ideal CEOs is not exactly new for journalism, the complete dismantling of established digital media like Buzzfeed News, while AI starts to replace many different jobs en mass makes this particular media apocalypse… very apocalypse-y.

This means many journalists and larger media outlets are turning to new ways of sustaining their work and themselves.

And in this particular media moment, the most popular new way of sustaining yourself as a media outlet is: newsletters.

I love newsletters.

Despite how I started this piece, I love newsletters. I don’t think organizing groups utilize newsletters nearly enough, and I’ve been bugging various groups about writing newsletters for many years.

The reason I love them:

Newsletters allow organizations, journalists, artists, weirdos, whoever, to establish a more direct connection with the people they’re trying to reach.

Newsletters are different from other mediums.

Other outreach methods — writing a press release, reaching out to journalists, posting on social media — are filtered through a labyrinth of social media algorithms and editor priorities.

But when you send an email, it goes directly to the person who (opted in) to receive messages from you.

I’ve had a newsletter for almost 7 years, a privilege I’ve abused to send missives about Lori Lightfoot’s Lollapalooza interviews and how sad I am about death.

But despite my love for newsletters, seeing newsletter become the Solution to Media Falling Apart alarms me.

While I won’t pretend part of my bewilderment isn’t in part fueled by envy (11,000 subscribers and a clear path to monetization in your first week of writing?!) another part of me is concerned because the mass “pivot to newsletter” says a lot about the fragmenting of media and the internet generally.

The rise of newsletters is a reaction to a critical distribution problem that I don’t think we talk about enough in either media or organizing spaces — but at the end of the day, it's doesn’t address or solve for that critical distribution problem.

In fact, they make those distribution problems even worse.

It makes good sense to start a newsletter — to take the skill and following you’ve built to a space where you can write about things that matter, beyond what a single group of old white dudes think you should be writing about or what you can get people to click out of Instagram to read.

But newsletters are also part of a trend towards smaller and smaller silos of media.

More silos mean even more exclusivity in access — not just in terms of who gets to be a journalist or a writer, but in terms of who gets media coverage at all.

We’ve all seen those terrible pieces from the Tribune editorial board

The reason those pieces still get published is because they have readers.

This isn’t even necessarily because those readers ENJOY or CHOOSE to read whatever the Tribune Board thought about for ten minutes on that day.

But they read the Tribune nonetheless.

The Tribune and other legacy media have readers simply because legacy media has ad money, platforms (fractured but still w/ some juice), and (for some people) credibility.

The Tribune reaches far more people than most newsletters, even the ones that baffle me by launching with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

Social media changed the calculus with distribution for many years: it created new methods of distribution for smaller platforms that otherwise wouldn’t have had the ability to launch, and it also made dominant media distribution centers have to pay attention to those they otherwise would ignore.

Melissa Gira Grant wrote about this kind of domino network marginalized voices effect on Twitter, saying: I’m good at my job, but [Twitter] is the reason I have a job.”

But those days in social media are long gone.

Long before Musk ran Twitter into the ground, almost all social media had long become a “pay to play” platform that emphasized performance marketing over organic reach.

Newsletters in this current media moment are, like Danny Lavery and Jo Livingstone’s new site tagline, “better than nothing.” 

But as I see more major journalists, writers, and media outlets choose newsletter strategies, creating member-funded publications with paywalls, I worry.

If every news outlet is based on a bespoke highly specific newsletter engagement model with highly specific funding, how do we engage with people outside of these hyperspecific niches?

As a media strategist who has deployed local officials’ fear of the press more successfully than I’ve done pretty much anything else — how do you reach elected officials with a newsletter?

How do you use media to push back against legacy coverage of figures who attract media attention whether they like it or not, like Brandon Johnson?

And how do these smaller niche newsletters fit into a media landscape that’s already fragmented and insular, if the way to run a successful newsletter is to appeal to a specific worldview and demographic?

I don’t know! But I think it’s worth thinking about now that there are all these newsletters.

How do you get traction on a fractionalized internet?

The rise of newsletters poses challenges, but it also presents some opportunities, both for organizing groups trying to stretch their communications money and practitioners trying to get their writing into the world.

Here are three strategies that seem to be working for progressive writers, organizers, community groups, and journalists that have a newsletter:

Be nice to each other. I’m sorry, this is corny. But it’s been striking to me to see how abysmal many social media platforms (not just Twitter, but mostly Twitter) have become in the last few years when it comes to not just casual right-wing hate speech, but how we talk to each other even we know each other in real life.

Everyone’s getting a sizeable volume of heinous reactionary hate in their DMs, which wears on you.

I think operating under the basic premise that anyone who has an online presence of any kind, however, you perceive their success, also gets 2-3 death threats a week.

It’s worth trying to be thoughtful and considerate on the internet, at least in one-to-one interactions.

With this in mind: one consequence of fractionalized media is that both reporters and organizations are also much more isolated, which makes it even easier to stay in your echo chambers and talk to no one.

The people I see who are good at mutually beneficial collaboration, are the ones growing faster and beating media silos most effectively. Even just talking on the phone or telling people when you like their stuff helps everyone grow.

Community Building.  

Trying New Types of Funding, Not New Types of Writing. One thing I keep seeing is the insistence that a new newsletter or indie publication is “creating a bold new type of journalism.” Okay cool! That’s fine. But you know what we need? A bold new type of media infrastructure — one that includes the boring stuff.

One example of this is Study Hall and PE Moskowitz, who share resources for freelancers. This also allows them to be experimental — for example, running a mini-grant program, or paying people differently (post writing) for posts that reach a higher number of new readers.

To me, the work that is interesting and important in media right now engages with the real dilemma at the crux of this crisis: losing journalism jobs and non-chaotic social media platforms means everyone reaches fewer people in their work.

By addressing these questions of distribution and growth through collaboration, we build a better media ecosystem.