I far prefer blogs to email newsletters & podcasts, which are about creator control, walled gardens of a sort. Blogs are open & thrive on links & conversation. Newsletters & podcasts are creators demanding attention: editorial ego & entitlement, no? 1/ https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/11/business/media/substack-newsletter-competition.html?smid=tw-share

I know, I'll be accused of being an old-fart blogger. Stipulated. I confess Twitter ruined me as a blogger & I don't pay the attention to mine I used to. Still, I appreciate and miss the generosity, collaboration, conversation of the form. 2/

Before you @ me--I know you will--there are newsletters I love, subscribe to & pay for & podcasts I subscribe to & support. I'm a podcaster myself ( @TWiT). I'm not decrying all newsletters & podcasts. Instead I'm lamenting a loss & worrying about a stampede & a glut. 3/

A problem with blogs: $. @Ev, bless him, keeps trying to solve that & proves it's not easy. Email newsletters & podcasts can pay creators. I'm all for that. But must payment require walling oneself away from copious links & conversation? 4/

I once asked the great pioneering blogger & inventor @davewiner, what happened: Blogs were so great, I said. Jeff, he said, everything's great when it starts. Maybe I'm just nostalgic: old-fart blogger again. But I don't want to lose the virtues of the form. It was too good. 5/

Irony: As I started this thread, what did Twitter do? It tried to entice me into writing a newsletter, of course. Maybe I will. If you can't beat 'em, join the stampede... 6/