Newsletters have become a great way for journalists and others to dive deep into less-covered topics and engage directly with their readers in ways not always possible in the mainstream media ecosystem.

The platform newsletter-competition.html">Substack is making it easy for them. The subscription-based model offers writers more editorial control and the ability to offer free content and earn a sustainable salary at a time when public trust in media is low, local news is thinning and media content is often driven by social-media algorithms.

We talk about email newsletters with people who write them and critique them.

GUESTS:

• Heather Cox Richardson - cox-richardson.html">Professor of history at Boston College; she writes the Letters from an American newsletter
• Gabe Fleisher - Student at Georgetown University and the author of the Wake Up To Politics newsletter
• Isaac Saul - A journalist and the author of the Tangle newsletter
• Ben Smith - Media columnist for The New York Times and the founder and former editor-in-chief of Buzzfeed News

Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.

Colin McEnroe, Jonathan McNicol, and Cat Pastor contributed to this show, which originally aired May 5, 2021.

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