About me
I grew up near Detroit and went to school at Michigan State, where I studied economics and co-founded a literary magazine called Oats. Between 2002 and 2012, I worked at Poynter, Current TV, and Twitter, and at all those places, my job had something to do with figuring out the future of media.
Right now, I’m a full-time writer. I believe that stories told primarily (but not exclusively) with words are among the most durable things a person can produce, and I’m trying my best to write a few that might make it through to the year 2112. If you read one and pass it along to someone else, you’re participating in that project—so, thank you!
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Most of my public conversations happen on Twitter, and it makes my day when people say hello and mention that they’ve read something here.
I send longer ruminations and sneak peeks to my email list. The messages aren’t too frequent and people seem to like them. Please consider joining up.
I collaborate with Tim Carmody and Matt Thompson on Snarkmarket, a leaky rocketship of a blog with a brilliant community of commenters.
Want to get in touch? Reach me here: robinsloan at robinsloan dot com
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What’s a media inventor, anyway? I think it’s someone primarily interested in content—words, pictures, ideas—who also experiments with new formats, new tools, and new technology. Allen Lane was a media inventor. Early bloggers were media inventors. The indie video game scene is full of media inventors.
Media inventors aren’t satisfied with the suite of formats available to them by default. Novel, novella, or short story; album, EP, or single; RPG, RTS, or FPS—media inventors don’t like those options.
Media inventors feel compelled to make the content and the container.
If this sounds like you, I invite you to use the label, too. More generally, I’m on a mission to bring back the word inventor with all its connotations: protean lightning-crackle and occasional crackpot-itude alike.
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But really, if you want to know anything about me, you need to know what I read, right? Here’s a text playlist to get you started:
- Constellational thinking, Tim Carmody
- 10 Reading Revolutions Before E-Books, Tim Carmody
- The internet of ghosts, Matt Thompson
- Let me tell you a story, Rob Greco
- The Glory of the Rails, Tony Judt
- The Last Novel, David Markson
- My Family and Other Animals, Gerald Durrell
- Wind, Sand & Stars, Antoine de Saint Exupery
- Kim, Rudyard Kipling
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Unknown
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And here are two more, both written by me over at Snarkmarket: