Newsletters 📨
Last edition, I asked y’all for newsletter recommendations. You came through! Thank you. I got many good suggestions, some I’m still reading and some I’m including here (and will add more as they keep rolling in and I keep reading more). It is, not surprisingly, very media nerd heavy, but not exclusively so. I may be wrong, but my current theory about my own media diet is that it’s still far too Twitter heavy, and not nearly enough newsletters. Newsletters are the legumes of the media world. Eat more legumes.
Deez Links — daily media pithiness, with the absolute correct amount of ironic distance. a must
America Press Institute’s Need To Know newsletter — just good solid media news
Spoook — tbh no idea, it’s crime and media and paranormal stuff but good
Annotations — bimonthly notes on (a piece of) writing from Jenny G. Zhang
Garbage Day — revolting internet filth
Newley’s Notes — weekly email from a WSJ reporter based in India
Reliable Sources — Long. Very long. I had to unsubscribe, because it was just TOO much. But it’s undeniably comprehensive and probably the one classic big media newsletter everyone should read, so. Now that I wrote that I guess I have to re-subscribe.
Splice Newsroom — Media transformation in Asia
Nieman Lab — many subscription options to choose from, but the daily is the thing to order
LINKS 🔗
Yahoo Japan, which is currently one of the country’s dominant digital media players, is turning to focus on e-commerce. CEO Kentaro Kawabe, announcing the recent $3.7 billion acquisition of an online fashion retailer, said the company’s goal is to surpass Amazon to become the No. 1 e-commerce company in Japan by the early 2020s. (Nikkei)
TikTok sends out a secret newsletter to specially selected media companies, giving them a sneak preview of the hashtag trends its going to heavily promote in the upcoming week. How does one get on this list? And is it actually at all interesting or useful? (Digiday)
Across Africa, the dominance of print is giving way to digital, though change varies widely by country. Continent wide, the latest available numbers show 21% of the population is online, while in South Africa, for instance, it’s 54%. (FIPP)
Last week’s story about Vice from The Cut, alternate titled “Vice’s Race To Save Itself” or “Vice’s Next Pivot” — just, well, if you haven’t read it, please do. It’s a snapshot of a media company in a very particular, very uncomfortable position. (The Cut)
Josh Gondelman nails exactly what is both so great and so horribly, terribly wrong about TSA PreCheck, over on Vox:
By all logic, PreCheck shouldn’t exist. We should not have to sacrifice privacy for convenience, and we should not be allowed to pay to bypass “necessary” security measures for a small fee. Either no one deserves these privileges or we all do. “TSA PreCheck For All” would be an immensely popular political platform for a Democratic presidential candidate.
That said, if you have the money and the time, it is easily worth the $17 per year to travel with a sliver of dignity intact and to feel, for just a moment, like a FastPass holder at the world’s most boring amusement park.
THREAD 🧵
Read, and weep for the dystopia we now inhabit:
