You may be familiar with Timothy B. Lee’s work from The Washington Post, Vox or Ars Technica — he worked at all three. Today Tim is a Substack author well into his second year of “Understanding AI,” a fast-rising analytical newsletter on the hottest topic around.
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We recently upgraded this cheat sheet to 19 newsletters, all with contact info. We tried to avoid the roll-up newsletters that point to others’ content but offer little of their own. There are a couple in there. Then again, those “digest” newsletters point to still more resources.
Though there are many more out there, this cheat sheet lists only seven Substack healthcare newsletters. We omitted the ones whose authors publish infrequently, and those that just don’t seem worth your time. Below are the ones “closest to useful.”
One year ago we fielded eight predictions for 2021. How did we do? Not great, honestly. Let’s look at each.
All year long we’ve read about editors planting their flag in Substack. Rare is the story about someone leaving it. That’s what Jacob Donnelly is doing. Jacob believes he has outgrown Substack, explaining in a Dec. 15 post that the platform is too rigid and prevents him from growing his business.
Here’s our latest list of Substack newsletters on cloud, security and fintech topics.
Newsletter Spy is a new tool that searches Substack for newsletter authors and topics. It’s exactly what the media-curious have been waiting for, since Substack itself provides little in the way of discovery. Prepare for disappointment.
In trendy and media trade media at least, the Substack-as-new-model-for-journalism story seems to have already come and gone. Yet there’s so much more left to tell. Perhaps the Substack story’s next phase is best told inside out, through the eyes of a newly self-minted author — such as James Ledbetter.
Add Substack to the list of platforms frustrating to PR — Product Hunt, Stack Overflow, Reddit, Quora — that command attention but aren’t pitchable like publications. Founded in 2017, Substack is a publishing platform for indie newsletter authors. It’s cool and we’ll get into why, but Substack’s web site is more or less a metaphorical black box.
YOUR ACCOUNT
FRIDGE NOTES
Here’s a true story. An Oct. 8 Adweek headline says, ‘Press Releases Have Become Way Too Hyperbolic.’ The deck says, ‘Experts Warn the Loss of Credibility Could Lead to Catastrophe.”
TechCrunch redesigned this week. Still green, less clutter. Built for the phone. Events and newsletters rank higher in the home page scroll than startups, venture and AI. No enterprise section. Parent Yahoo invested this money to build engagement. More changes due in 2025, EIC Connie Loizos says.
Adweek’s Mark Stenberg reports that Wired is getting into the awards business. The Wired 101 Awards will debut in October. Be on the lookout for the announcement.
BI’s publishing software knows what you’ve clicked on before and where you came from. Through Google Analytics, BI also knows how all readers react to certain content. Once you visit, BI knows whether to ask you to subscribe, or to register, or just to let you see everything for just that one visit. Conversions rose 75 percent this year. Digiday got the scoop (subscription required).
Fascinating piece from Lars Lofgren about how a Forbes subsidiary — under the Forbes name — has managed to dominate Google search results…
…and now it turns out that Forbes — both iterations — are set to be purchased by the venture arm of Koch Industries. Nice scoop, Sara.
Now that it has sold off its classifieds business, the owner of Politico and Business Insider will go shopping for more titles. Don’t be surprised if News Corp. sells the WSJ to Axel Springer, especially if Lachlan Murdoch loses his grip on the media empire built by his politically conservative father.
