In our mission to reinvent the newsletter, Revue launches Discover
The highly curated directory of personal newsletters
We live in a world of 140 character limits on Twitter, fake news on Facebook, clickbait headlines and search engine optimized copy. It can get confusing, exhausting and overwhelming. I often find myself longing for those rich thought pieces that make you stop and think for a minute or two. Journalism has changed its ways over the years and so have many opinion leaders.
It’s an outright relief that authors are taking to email to write and publish extensive essays, opinion pieces that provide an in-depth dissection of a topic, or personal experiences in niche areas. Clive Thompson covered this nicely in his piece “The blissfully slow world of the Internet Newsletter”.
This idea stuck with us and we spent a few good months working on another side project. Mainly, a collection of our favorite personal newsletters. We’re launching this amazing directory today and it’s called Discover. Why did we launch it you may ask?
Firstly, let’s start with the fact that the personal newsletter is certainly not a new phenomenon. Bob Lefsetz started writing “The Lefsetz Letter”, a daily email that addresses the issues that are at the core of music, in May 2005. Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin started “theSkimm” in 2012. Maria Popova used to send out a simple newsletter to her closest friends all the way back in 2006. This newsletter later transformed itself into what we know today as “Brain Pickings”. Dave Pell, who describes himself as a “curation savant” has been curating the world’s most interesting news daily for years now!
Thing is, those are just a few of the many examples of popular personal newsletters. The idea for Discover came about mostly because at Revue, we love the depth and admire writers who cover niche topics in great detail. We love the intimacy of seeing these notes arriving in our inboxes directly from our favorite authors. That pretty much pushed us to collect those digests in one place with the goal of providing even more value to readers!
Similarly to us, former blogger and co-founder of WeTransfer Nalden, who also turned personal newsletter author associates newsletters with that magical moment you find a postcard in your mailbox.
“Email today is still a great communication tool as it gives people the space to read their email when and where they want it. People can read or send mail while on the go, or really sit down for it and write something more extensive. Either way there’s less urgency. And still has the most resemblance with postcards. There’s some magic in that.” -Nalden, co-founder of WeTransfer
There’s definitely some magic to the personal newsletter. Mostly because connecting through text and email on a deeper level with people is something that you’d think is not really possible. Yet, personal newsletters serve as the perfect tool for that. The personal touch in those digests creates a special feeling. We asked M.G. Siegler about his opinion on the matter:
“I wanted to experiment with a way to more directly engage with readers. Since I’ve become a newsletter reader myself again, I’ve found a level of closeness with those authors that I’m not used to with typical blog posts. For whatever reason I feel like I can use a less formal tone in writing these newsletters. And I also enjoy the direct responses back that I get.” — M.G. Siegler, general partner at GV
Indeed, a personal newsletter is a great way to achieve that level of “closeness” with newsletter authors as well as your own readers. That’s one of the main things that separates the personal digest from blog posts, social media statuses and automated newsletter blasts. Often, we wake up in the morning, eager to check if the latest issue by our favorite author has arrived, much like we used to check the mailbox for the daily newspaper or weekly magazine in the old days. Even if there are some typos in there ;)
“The amount of ‘accidents’ I’ve had in email is disturbing — when you write a blog on the internet, you’re in this mindset that you can edit it later if something’s wrong… but once an email is gone, it’s permanent. That’s actually kind of beautiful, in a way, but also can mean you send some embarrassing typos or temporary copy to 12,000 people…”- Owen Williams, Charged
We noticed that our favorite thought leaders, entrepreneurs and in general people we look up to have a newsletter. And a popular one at that. This makes you think about all the reasons why someone like entrepreneur and author Seth Godin; tech guru Kevin Kelly; writer and entrepreneur Leo Babauta; writer at the Hustle Kendall Baker; tech entrepreneur, investor and New York Times best selling author Tim Ferriss; music industry analyst Bob Lefsetz and so many others spend so much time and effort on curating their newsletter regularly. Same goes for TechCrunch journalists like Jon Russel who covers tech in Asia, for actresses like Lena Dunham, for entrepreneurs like Benedict Evans who started sending out a newsletter all the way back in 2013!
Maybe it’s because Twitter, Facebook and their personal blogs are just not enough anymore to reach their audience in the right way? Or maybe it’s because they’ve seen the potential of email and it’s ability to share one’s thoughts with people in a personal way? Regardless of what the reason may be, there’s a new trend and a disruptive one at that. It’s shifting the ways of people who want to communicate with others online.
Anyone can and should have a newsletter and because this has been one of our core beliefs, we decided to compile this extensive directory with some of the most quality personal newsletters out there.
So take a look, discover newsletters that might seem interesting to you and why not start your own personal newsletter? We’re living in an era with a very high demand for personal, authentic messaging. Newsletters prove to offer this unique value and it’s our mission to make this sort of communicating as simple as possible.
Since you made it all the way to the end of this article, maybe you’d like to give us some love on ProductHunt today, we’d really appreciate it! :)
