The newsletter now

I always appre­ciate Dan Oshinky’s thoughts on newsletters, and I found this assess­ment espe­cially inter­esting and circumspect: It’s 2025. Is it still worth launching a newsletter?

I’m very invested in the format, of course. My newsletter is, by a wide margin, my most valu­able com­mu­ni­ca­tion channel. If my dig­ital house was burning and I could only save one thing, I wouldn’t hesitate: the email list comes with me. This take-it-with-you-ness remains email’s most impor­tant feature, even while the format leaves so much else to be desired; even as the envi­ron­ment of the inbox changes, becomes more slippery, like the rest of the internet.

Dan’s Inbox Col­lec­tive dispatches are con­sis­tently good. (Here’s the latest one.) My own newsletter is suf­fi­ciently odd-shaped, and my goals for it suf­fi­ciently distinct, that the advice isn’t usu­ally applic­able to me … yet it’s still valu­able to hang out in a space totally focused on this format and just like, osmose.