I read plenty of newsletters, but I don’t subscribe to very many. Often — especially in the case of the personal and quirky, and the less overtly news-pegged — I scroll through the archives of newsletters on the web and read several editions at a time.
It’s great. It’s like reading blogs.
Newsletters seem to have circled around from being the new blogs to being like blogs (but with posts that are emailed to readers). The web interface of any given public Substack is basically that of a blog. You can even set up comments. And there are subscription apps like Stoop that organize newsletters’ content as RSS readers did for blogs.
One reason we might see a resurgence of blogs is the novelty. Tell someone you’re starting a new newsletter and they might complain about how many newsletters (or podcasts) they already subscribe to. But tell them you’re launching a blog and see how that goes: Huh. Really, a blog? In 2020? Wow.
It’s been long enough now that people look back on blogging fondly, but the next generation of blogs will be shaped around the habits and conventions of today’s internet. Internet users are savvier about things like context collapse and control (or lack thereof) over who gets to view their shared content. Decentralization and privacy are other factors. At this moment, while so much communication takes place backstage, in group chats and on Slack, I’d expect new blogs to step in the same ambiguous territory as newsletters have — a venue for material where not everyone is looking, but privacy is neither airtight nor expected.
Blogs offer the potential to broadcast, but not too broadly. We might even see a breakdown where newsletters begin to focus more on individual personal stories and daily digests, while blogs will fill in the gaps of all that might be written about otherwise.
It is genuinely pleasant to scroll through Jason Kottke’s blog when I have no idea where else to click on the internet. It’s pleasant to scroll through the archives of various newsletters too. Such spaces are escape hatches from the horse-race election cycle: People are looking for those escape hatches, and they’re looking to create them too. So why not start a blog?
Joanne McNeil is author of the book Lurking: How a Person Became a User, out next month.
I read plenty of newsletters, but I don’t subscribe to very many. Often — especially in the case of the personal and quirky, and the less overtly news-pegged — I scroll through the archives of newsletters on the web and read several editions at a time.
It’s great. It’s like reading blogs.
Newsletters seem to have circled around from being the new blogs to being like blogs (but with posts that are emailed to readers). The web interface of any given public Substack is basically that of a blog. You can even set up comments. And there are subscription apps like Stoop that organize newsletters’ content as RSS readers did for blogs.
One reason we might see a resurgence of blogs is the novelty. Tell someone you’re starting a new newsletter and they might complain about how many newsletters (or podcasts) they already subscribe to. But tell them you’re launching a blog and see how that goes: Huh. Really, a blog? In 2020? Wow.
It’s been long enough now that people look back on blogging fondly, but the next generation of blogs will be shaped around the habits and conventions of today’s internet. Internet users are savvier about things like context collapse and control (or lack thereof) over who gets to view their shared content. Decentralization and privacy are other factors. At this moment, while so much communication takes place backstage, in group chats and on Slack, I’d expect new blogs to step in the same ambiguous territory as newsletters have — a venue for material where not everyone is looking, but privacy is neither airtight nor expected.
Blogs offer the potential to broadcast, but not too broadly. We might even see a breakdown where newsletters begin to focus more on individual personal stories and daily digests, while blogs will fill in the gaps of all that might be written about otherwise.
It is genuinely pleasant to scroll through Jason Kottke’s blog when I have no idea where else to click on the internet. It’s pleasant to scroll through the archives of various newsletters too. Such spaces are escape hatches from the horse-race election cycle: People are looking for those escape hatches, and they’re looking to create them too. So why not start a blog?
Joanne McNeil is author of the book Lurking: How a Person Became a User, out next month.
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Craig Newmark Formalizing newsrooms’ battle against disinformation
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Kerri Hoffman Opening closed systems
Cristina Kim Public media stops trying to serve “everybody”
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John Keefe Journalism gets hacked
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Laura E. Davis Know the context your journalism is operating within
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Whitney Phillips A time to question core beliefs
Meredith Artley Stronger solidarity among news organizations
Jeff Kofman Speed through technology
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Lauren Duca The rise of the journalistic influencer
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Jakob Moll A slow-moving tech backlash among young people
Candis Callison Taking a cue from Indigenous journalists on climate change
Francesco Zaffarano TikTok without generational prejudice
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Carrie Brown-Smith Engaged journalism: It’s finally happening
Helen Havlak Platforms shine a light on original reporting
Colleen Shalby Journalists become media literacy teachers
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Mike Caulfield Native verification tools for the blue checkmark crowd
Steve Henn The dawning audio web
Jim Brady We’ll complain about other people living in bubbles while ignoring our own
Meg Marco Everything happens somewhere
Felix Salmon Spotify launches a news channel
Michael W. Wagner Increasingly fractured, but little bit deliberative
Lucas Graves A smarter conversation about how (and why) fact-checking matters
Knight Foundation Five generations of journalists, learning from each other
Fiona Spruill The climate crisis gets the coverage it deserves
Sara K. Baranowski A big year for little newspapers
Bill Grueskin Our ethics codes get an overhaul
Rick Berke Incoming fire from both left and right
Mariana Moura Santos The future of journalism is collaborative
Irving Washington Leadership isn’t something you learn on the job
Sarah Stonbely More people start caring about news inequality
Tanya Cordrey Saying no to more good ideas
Emily Withrow The year we kill the news article
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Joe Amditis Collaborative journalism takes its rightful place at the table
Simon Galperin Journalism becomes more democratic
Catalina Albeanu Rebuilding journalism, together
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Joanne McNeil A return to blogs (finally? sort of?)
Josh Schwartz Publishers move beyond the metered paywall
Ernie Smith The death of the industry fad
Anthony Nadler Clash of Clans: Election Edition
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John Garrett It’s the best time in a century to start a local news organization
Doris Truong The year of radical salary transparency
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Dan Shanoff Sports media enters the Bronny era
Kevin D. Grant The free press stands against authoritarians’ attacks on truth
Heidi Tworek The year of positive pushback
Elizabeth Dunbar Frank talk, and then action
Cindy Royal Prepare media students for skills, not job titles
A.J. Bauer A fork in the road for conservative media
Zizi Papacharissi A president leads, the press follows, reality fades
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Mario García Think small (screen)
Richard Tofel A constraint of the reader-revenue model emerges
Errin Haines Race and gender aren’t a 2020 story — they’re the story
Christa Scharfenberg It’s time to make journalism a field that supports and respects women
Jake Shapiro Podcasting gets listener relationship management
S. Mitra Kalita The race to 2021
J. Siguru Wahutu Western journalists, learn from your African peers
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Sarah Schmalbach Journalist, quantify thyself
Jeremy Gilbert and Jarrod Dicker A call for collaboration between storytelling and tech
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Seth C. Lewis 20 questions for 2020
Peter Bale Lies get further normalized
Logan Jaffe You don’t need fancy tools to listen
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Eric Nuzum Podcasting finally creates another mega-hit show
Elizabeth Hansen and Jesse Holcomb Local news initiatives run into a capital shortage
Monica Drake A renewed focus on misinformation
Kathleen Searles Pay more attention to attention
Cory Haik We’re already consuming the future of news — now we have to produce it
Greg Emerson News apps fall further behind
Bill Adair A Nobel Prize, a Brad Pitt film, and a Taylor Swift song
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