By Brendan O’Meara (11/29/2024)
There are a few “newsletters” I subscribe to that are anything but. Newsletters have morphed into blog posts. But you wouldn’t ever call a blog post a newsletter? Remember blogs? This is a blog post. Maybe it’s like how a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle isn’t a square?
Newsletters have the one golden thing going for them: permission. This is getting increasingly violated. Now, instead of posting to a blog, or even social media, creators with your email address are bombarding you with their Substacks.[SEE FOOTNOTE 1]. It goes directly to your inbox! No algorithm! These creators/writers/whatever are letting the platform host their blog in exchange for the ease of distribution. It takes effort to visit someone’s website.
Let’s take a moment here: Not THAT long ago, if you liked someone’s blog, you just bookmarked it (or you had an RSS reader) and you visited it every day to see if there was a new blog post. It was like going to the magazine stand to see if there was a new issue. These days it takes a LOT of intentionality; we’ve grown so used to algorithms doing the heavy lifting for us, learning from us, and curating things for us, that we’ve forgotten what it means to have agency. It’s lazy and kinda dangerous.
My monthly Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter is as basic as they come. I think it needs refreshing from your classic here’s a bunch of links I think you’ll find cool. I stole that format from Austin Kleon like ten years ago (I don’t use affiliate links because that feels icky to me). But my frequency is monthly, not weekly (tried that for a month and failed beautifully, losing a a significant chunk of my list and gaining almost nothing back).
I’ve long had a “riff” in my newsletter, but this was just a blog post about a thought I had on creativity, or writing, or what’s bothering me about being in the creative space. I like to add value to your life. I try not to extract too much of your attention. I started, but I don’t know if I’ll continue, of making a hand-written letter (that I scan and embed in the newsletter body). It’s a pain to read, but at least it’s different.
Despite newsletters being about news, I’m also miffed by newsletters that are too myopic and only share information when a writer has something to sell: a book, a course, their speaking schedule. This is more prevalent on Instagram where the hustle is all too real.
What’s the solution? Should the newsletter have zero “bloggy” elements? Should it only be about newsy updates? Honestly, as long as it’s entertaining and respects my time, I’m happy. If a writer puts me on their email list without asking, I get pretty upset—unsportsmanlike conduct. I don’t have the guts to unsubscribe from any non-corporate newsletter (because I know how devastating those un-subs are), but so long as you stick to the contract, then we’re not gonna have a problem.
When social media came along, people got lazy about blogging because it was so difficult to cut through the noise and very hard to be “discovered.” I hope people are realizing that the social media rules have long changed and it’s next to impossible to hashtag your way to virality and a five- or six-digit “following” that makes the traditional gatekeepers reach for their napkins.
A newsletter should have news. If you have a book coming out, a pre-order link, a post(?)-order link, a list of events, you’d be silly to not share that. Ultimately, a great newsletter is generous. It gives, gives, gives, and rarely ask for anything in return.
The newsletter should be elevated. It should offer something that can’t be found anywhere else. It should also be a bit more crafty. It should feel like you’ve been let behind a velvet rope. But please don’t confuse it with a blog. Please, revive your blog.
In the grand scheme of trying to hijack people’s attention, what was once done on social media has moved into the email inbox and people’s newsletters have more in common with SPAM than a love letter to your (ideally) hard-earned audience through trust and patience.
1 . I guess Substack isn’t really a newsletter platform as it is a blog platform masquerading as a newsletter service. And make no mistake, they are a social media platform. User beware.
