Adapted from an edition of my newsletter, Newley’s Notes, sent October 25, 2020. Image via Onlineprinters on Unsplash.
Email newsletters, as I’ve mentioned before, are a fantastic tool for keeping track of fast-breaking news — and man, has there been a lot of that recently — and being exposed to big ideas.
Here are ten of my favorites.
I like that most of these provide an individual’s voice, an interesting perspective, and highlight material I wouldn’t otherwise see:
📱 1) Benedict Evans’ weekly newsletter is a must-read if you care about tech. A longtime VC at famed Silicon Valley firm Andreessen Horowitz, he has deep knowledge of the history of tech and business; I appreciate his macro-level views especially.
🗯 2) Another excellent tech-focused newsletter is Azeem Azhar’s Exponential View. Tagline: a “weekly guide to the future.”
💻 3) On Tech, by the New York Times’s Shira Ovide, is a daily dispatch on technology happenings, ranging from tech’s collision with business and politics to cultural issues. A bonus: she concludes each email an item labeled “hugs to this” – a link to something special, often related to animal hi-jinx.
📕 4) One of my favorite websites all of time is Five Books. Academics, authors, and other experts in their fields recommend the five best books on particular topics. Brilliant, simple, and hugely useful. Their newsletter provides their most recent posts.
📖 5) Anne Trubek, author and founder of Cleveland-based independent publisher Belt Publishing, writes a newsletter called Notes from a Small Press. It’s full of details on the history of publishing and what it’s like to be a book publisher in 2020. (Longtime readers may recall that my first job out of college was working as an editorial assistant at Random House, and I remain interested in book publishing.)
✏️ 6) Longform.org’s newsletter provides a summation of all the best long-form writing from the past week.
🗞 7) Matt Thomas’s Sunday New York Times Digest is just that: links to must-reads from each edition of the traditionally massive Sunday paper.
☔ 8) Lee Lefever, a digital business guru, is documenting in his newsletter Ready for Rain his move from Seattle to Orcas Island, where he and his wife are building a house. It’s full of meditations on lifestyle, tech, and, of course, homebuilding.
🥼 9) Peter Attia is a physician who focuses on topics such as longevity, nutrition, and athletic performance. His newsletter contains his most recent blog posts and alerts when a new episode of his (excellent) podcast is out.
🎨 10) …and last but not least, I got the idea for this week’s Newley’s Notes from artist and writer Austin Kleon, who did the same in this week’s edition of his newsletter, which is all about art, literature, music, and creativity. Since he wrote a popular book called “Steal Like an Artist,” I figured it was fitting to draw inspiration from him. 🙂
What did I miss? What are some of your favorites? Leave a comment or share this post on Twitter; I’m @Newley.
