Marginalia 2.0
On restarting this thing while feeling like the string quartet on the Titanic
This week's Marginalia: a reintroduction and some meta-commentary on newsletters and the media industry. Rest assured I do not intend for future editions of this to have as much navel-gazey pontificating.
Until two weeks ago, I was a senior culture reporter at HuffPost. Some of you read this newsletter in its first iteration on Tinyletter, from 2016 to 2020, a period during which I burned out (in quite spectacular fashion) of covering breaking news and national politics, and used this as a space to figure out how to cover culture. My newsletter routine petered out for various reasons (a certain global event in 2020 — but also, by the fall of that year, I did finally fight my way into the job I had until two weeks ago). I'm happy to say writing those dispatches was instrumental to getting me out of that turbulent period of my career, so thanks to all of you OG subscribers.
As I relaunch this thing in a far different stage of my career, I've been thinking a lot about who and what newsletters are for. Everyone and their mother seems to have a newsletter (or a podcast, or both). When I started Marginalia 1.0 in 2016, at first, I intentionally kept the subscriber list to people I knew in real life — friends, colleagues, longtime mentors, my parents (lol) — because I thought of this as an experiment, and I didn't want to have to navigate the question of whether I was sharing anything too personal.
This time, partially by necessity, this is for public consumption (though yes, many of you have come here because we know each other IRL). By design, newsletters take on a more personal and casual tone: after all, I am arriving directly in your inbox. People like reading newsletters precisely because we feel a bit more of a personal connection to the newsletter writer. So it's a question I will now have to tackle as I go.
I also wonder about the sustainability of newsletters. Many more journalists — whether by choice or, like me, after a layoff — have struck out on their own, given how much the media industry has cratered. Some have found success in building an audience, monetizing it, etc. But you can't Substack your way to stability and health insurance.
An excerpt from my 1000-word goodbye email (10 years, three jobs, and negotiating two union contracts made me an institution at my now-former employer, so I figured I earned the right to a long — and at times, saucy — swan song):
This should have ended differently: I and everyone else this week could be leaving here because we wanted to, not because of business decisions we had nothing to do with. Please do right by everyone who's still here.
I'll admit I'm really fucking scared about the future — for myself, sure, but more importantly, for our industry and our country. For a decade, I've been so proud to work at a place that calls things exactly what they are, when other outlets haven't (and still don't). I've also been incensed by the way media executives have devalued our work and have run great news outlets into the ground, putting profits over people, forcing talented journalists out of this industry, and doing our readers — the American public — a great disservice. For those of you still here, I know you'll keep fighting the good fight, and I will forever be rooting for you.
Make no mistake: The disintegration of this country's media infrastructure is a huge loss for you, the readers. Independent journalists do some incredible work, but often without the legal protections, time, and stability that being on staff at a news outlet affords. That's something I’m wrestling with in real time, after being one of the lucky ones to have a staff job for a decade. And as a reader, it's not exactly practical for you to subscribe to a bunch of writers' individual Substacks. I'm encouraged by the proliferation of worker-owned publications like Defector, 404 Media, Hell Gate, and the 51st. But time will tell if that financial model will work out in the long term. I dabble with the idea of starting my own culture-focused publication, but am daunted by even the thought of it.
As a culture reporter, I've covered a lot of similar upheavals happening in the entertainment industry. When I would interview, say, film and TV writers, we’d often remark how we’re all fighting the same fight. It has felt a lot like being the string quartet on the Titanic.
As a critic, some of the best pieces I wrote in the last few years were about shows and films that have blisteringly depicted the corrosiveness of capitalism — HBO's "Succession" the high-water mark of them all. Rereading this piece I wrote two years ago on that spectacular final season: pretty eerie. Right now, Apple TV+'s "Severance" is in some ways a continuation of that thread, though from a much different angle. I was not so subtle in my review of the show's current season, perhaps fittingly one of the last things I wrote at HuffPost.
I like those reviews and essays because they're punchy. I pride myself on being able to call it like it is. But that work is going to be harder to do on a large scale, and seems to be devalued more and more.
In a strange turn of events, I recently started teaching a culture reporting and criticism course at CUNY's Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. I love it and am so inspired by my students. But I also fear for their future, and it's a mindfuck, to say the least, advising them on how to enter my profession while I might be heading for the exits.
I'm not optimistic about the future of media, but I will soldier on. I have been writing since I could hold a pen, so why stop now? It will likely have to take on a different form and forum. A colleague of mine said our industry is long overdue for some reshaping or reimagining, so maybe we’ll collectively figure that out at some point. Reinvention is hard, but I am reminded that my immigrant parents had to reinvent themselves at nearly middle age. A longtime mentor of mine recently reminded me that “life is long” — which fittingly is something he has been telling me for more than 15 years.
I'm mostly envisioning this newsletter as a way to keep my brain moving, while I figure out what's next. In future editions, I hope to get back to some of the reporting and criticism you're probably used to from me, and not so much navel-gazey pontificating like this. There will also be seeds of ideas (margin notes, as the name suggests), as well as updates about relevant aspects of my life, such as my long-gestating book project, which I am determined to make happen this year.
If there's anything specific you'd like to see or read about, feel free to let me know. I'm experimenting with becoming more of a community builder too. Something nice about this format is that it can be more of a conversation and not so one-sided. So don’t hesitate to hit reply, leave a comment, or drop me a line however you wish.
In the future, I’ll ponder a more clever sign off. But for now, see you next time.