Emily McTavish
May 10, 2019
On any given weekday, I receive about five newsletters to my inbox. These are not from the blogs or businesses I follow but are from news organizations. Newsletters are increasingly my first source for news when I wake up and check my phone in the morning.
Hunter Clauss, writer of WBEZ’s The Rundown, said he, too, observed a surge in newsletter offerings and thinks it is in part due to a shift by social media platforms.
“Part of the reason you’re probably noticing it more is because it’s a way to get around Facebook and Twitter and their ever-changing algorithms,” Clauss said. “…Newsletters are becoming more important as a way to reach people when these social media companies are grappling with their own problems.”
A study commissioned by Powerinbox, an email platform company, found 60 percent of American adults subscribe to at least one email newsletter. Additionally, the top reason for subscribing is the trust in the publisher, according to the study. Analysts also found only 34 percent of participants trusted social media as a valid news source.
WBEZ launched The Rundown in July 2018. Less than 40 percent of radio stations offer a newsletter, according to data analyzed by the Tow Center for Digital Journalismat Columbia University. In comparison, 65 percent of daily newspapers surveyed had newsletter options.
Clauss said WBEZ’s strategy was to reach readers on their commute home rather than compete against the influx of early morning emails. He picks the five top stories of the day, which do not always include a story produced by the WBEZ, to share in a short, digestible summary with links.
The WBEZ reporter added that curating and sourcing stories can be challenging with more news sites limiting access for non-members.
“We are mindful that not everyone has a subscription to all these places,” Clauss said. “We will try and stay away from things that have paywalls when we can.”
Clauss also said integrating his own personality into The Rundown can be tricky. He said WBEZ wanted to have a tone reflecting how someone would explain the news to a friend.
One of the first email newsletters to go truly viral for its conversational style was The Daily Skimm. The operation was created by former NBC News producers, Carly Zakin and Danielle Weisberg, in 2012.
The Skimm now reaches more than 7 million readers each weekday morning and has expanded into a podcast, lifestyle blog, massive social media following and a forthcoming book.
However, The Skimm has drawn criticism over the casual writing targeting millennial women. In 2017, Christina Cauterucci compared the newsletter to Ivanka Trump in an article for Slate. Cauterucci argued the language used in The Skimm undermined the readers’ intelligence and knowledge about the world and news events.
“The newsletter keeps readers’ attention by peppering serious news items with conversational quips, like a thirsty high-school history teacher rapping about current events,” Cauterucci wrote.
As an example, Cauterucci included an excerpt from the newsletter describing the news of Chelsea Manning finishing her prison sentence for leaking State Department documents to WikiLeaks.
“What to say when your friend asks what time you can get drinks after work…I’ll be free earlier than expected. Just like Chelsea Manning,” appeared in The Skimm in May 2017.
In contrast to Slate, New York-based journalist Kaitlin Ugolik defended The Skimmfor the Columbia Journal Review. Ugolik said there isn’t one way to consume news and that it would be dangerous to alienate an entire demographic.
“What we as journalists haven’t yet seemed to grasp is that to reach more people—whether in a factory in Kentucky or at a cocktail party in Manhattan—our approach may need to change,” Ugolik wrote. “The goal can’t be to turn everyone into a newshound. If we want people to get more comfortable with the news, we have to get more comfortable meeting them where they are.”
While The Skimm may attract some readers and turn off others, their model for gathering the top news stories is valid, and the humanized style is crucial for newsletter writing.
Editors at The Seattle Times took the time to reexamine their automated newsletters during a digital redesign in 2015. Now their Morning Brief newsletter, for example, is written by reporters and editors.
Last year, The Desert Sun’s Executive Editor Julie Makinen announcedthe paper’s newsletters would be written by staff members rather than culled by artificial intelligence and algorithms. Makinen said their goal is to push out more informative and comprehensive news, and she noted this change would initiate an increase in dialogue between the newsroom and readers.
Newsletters have the added value of both bringing more information to a conversation and connecting to a community. These types of emails will continue to be an effective way to reach readers and be primary sources as the digital landscape changes.
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