🔶 7 things I learned from writing a weekly newsletter for one year
For a little over one year, I've been writing the News Alchemists newsletter, a curation of links to make you think and give you hope about reimagining journalism in a people-centric direction.
It's been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career.
In this post, I share 7 things I've learned so far.
1️⃣ You need to make it easy. Like, very easy.
About a decade ago, I spent six months in Southeast Asia on a solo backpacking trip. I decided to write a blog to document the adventure, and I was very committed.
I wrote five posts before the trip even started. Then one post per week in the first month or so. Then the frequency quickly faded as the trip went on, and in the last two months I wrote only once.
Five years later I decided to quit a job without a new one lined up, and what did I do? I started a newsletter to talk about it, of course. But mindful of the blogging experience, I set out to outsmart myself: no long-term commitment I won't be able to maintain, I'm only going to write this newsletter for twelve weeks.
Couldn't even do that. After just four weeks, I couldn't keep up with the every-other-week rhythm. Nine editions in, I stopped writing altogether.
Fast forward to February 2025, when I decided to start writing the News Alchemists newsletter. I knew one thing: if I don't make it easy on myself, this is not going to last.
I needed to 'template it' to avoid staring every week at a blank canvas. Enter the "seven links to make you think and give you hope" format, which makes starting the writing process feel more like a drag-and-drop exercise, bypassing the blank canvas fear entirely.
How do I know it worked? To my amazement, I have not skipped a single week yet, except for when I took time off from work.
In an ultimate exercise of vulnerability (considering that I am more than mildly ashamed of the quality of my writing at the time), I will share the links to the aforementioned travel blog and career-break newsletter with the first five people who ask for them. 🫣
2️⃣ Numbers lie. All the time.
I am a data nerd. I have spreadsheets for everything. The books I read. My finances. How my body weight changes day after day. (I know, it's weird.)
No surprise then that I run my newsletter's operations mostly through a spreadsheet that currently has... [counting]... [still counting]... twenty-four different tabs.
Of those tabs, the one I spend most time looking at and updating is all about the analytics: open rates, click rates, click-to-open rates, number of new subscribers, how many people unsubscribe, etc.
And yet that's exactly the tab that lies to me most often.