08 January 2016

Fit to Print

To say that newsletters are now a thing is probably way behind the times. Currently I subscribe to way too many of them. It's like following blogs back in the day; there's an endless amount of good ones. I basically subscribe to everything and then try it out for a week. Newsletters for fantasy basketball, for tech stuff, for books, for heartbreak, for random science news, it's endless.

I'm also quick to unsubscribe, as I often just want a taste and a look at the format. For example, while I liked The Skimm a lot, I stopped subscribing to it to make bandwidth for other newsletters. Here are my current newsletter favorites:

Lenny
Bi-weekly dispatches from Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner. Basically every issue blows my mind for who they interview or get stories from. I already recommended Lenny near the bottom of "Five Times Five." Leeennnnyyy!

Next Draft
Can’t beat Dave Pell for newsletter mastery. “The day’s most fascinating news” is just about right. I don’t click on everything but the consistent quality of Next Draft is incomparable.

This.cm
I kind of hate that this is a huge deal. "Each member can share just one link a day.” This is something so simple I/everyone should have thought of it. Jealousy is what it is. The daily newsletters This has been kicking out has been uniformly full of interesting stuff. Damn them.

Austin Kleon
The author of Steal Like an Artist shares ten things each week. This newsletter is super popular and for good reason! His recent "20 good books I read in 2015" is a pure winner.

The Ann Friedman Weekly
In an interesting model, this newsletter has two versions: free and paid. So far Friedman’s stuff has been great and I like the mix of personal and professional stuff she covers. Plus GIFs!

 Hot Pod, by Nick Quah
A newsletter about podcasts from Panoply's audience development team member. Basically if you care about podcasts as an industry, a must-read. Also, here's Quah on why podcasting is overwhelmingly white.

Caitlin Dewey
The Washington Post’s digital cultural critic. The newsletter's title says it all: "Links I would Gchat you if we were friends.”

Jamelle Bouie
Staff writer for Slate, and general political analyst. Bouie’s newsletter always has a ton of great links.

The Daily Rumpus
I've been following Stephen Elliot's overly personal missives for awhile now, and recently he's handed off newsletter duties to Marisa Siegel, Managing Editor for The Rumpus.

Queen, by Alexander Chee
Infrequent but always great, and with another book about to release, The Queen of the Night, I’m expecting an uptick in updates.

 Three Cents, by Manjula Martin
One half of the now defunct Scratch Magazine team, this is Martin’s personal newsletter. “I’ll send you 2 things about money and 1 about love, every 3 weeks.”