This Week's Interview

Sarah Baird is a journalist in Eastern Kentucky. Through her Substack newsletter, The Goldenrod, she's keeping communities often overlooked by traditional media outlets informed with stories that matter for their towns and families. Baird's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, GQ, Good Housekeeping and Marie Claire.

This week, she shares her advice for writing work that matters. 

Trends in Tech & Media:

• 📰 The New York Times has a newsletter project? The New York Times is working on expanding its newsletter operations, according to a leaked memo published by Business Insider. The NYT already publishes dozens of newsletters covering music, cooking, news, tech and business. But, the NYT is now hiring employees to work on a "newsletter project," according to the memo. What will that entail? An open platform, perhaps? We'll have to wait to find out. 
   
• ✉️ Substack acquires Letter. This week, Substack added Letter to its portfolio of media brands. Letter is a writing platform for long-form discussion where writers are free to debate at length, writing letters back and forth. The acquisition follows Substack's earlier purchase of People & Company, the community building startup, and the launch of Booksmart Studios, its new podcast network. Nick Quah did a deep dive on the podcast network for his own (non) Substack newsletter, Hot Pod. Many things coming together! Some might call it—a bundle.
   
• 🦆 DuckDuckGo's email privacy plan. Remember Apple's email tracking announcement? DuckDuckGo is following suit, removing tracking from its email service. As more email service providers ramp up their privacy offerings, digital media upstarts will need to rethink how they track and measure success. Without metrics, quality is all that's left. 

 Surveys! 🎉

Newsletter Crew is doing a survey to collect data on the business of newsletters. Help us by sharing completely anonymous data about your newsletter (open rate, sponsorship pricing, and more.)

When we're done, we'll have a real-time data set to understand what's working for newsletter writers. Your answers will only be used to help other writers! Fill out our survey below.

Resources:

• Judd Legum reflected on three years of writing a paid newsletter. 
• Substack launched its 6-week cohort of classes for writers.  
• This month's Not A Newsletter is jam-packed. 

Inside Newsletter Crew's Community

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• Fintech Today. Fintech Today is a newsletter on what's newsworthy and noteworthy in the fintech space, written by Ian Kar and Julie Verhage. Subscribe.