The topic of email newsletters keeps showing up on my radar. Maybe it’s that I’m tuned to it because I spent the last three months on a deep-dive into email newsletters with some smart and dedicated independent journalists on behalf of the Institute for Nonprofit News. But whatever the reason, everywhere I turn lately, there’s someone else praising email newsletters.
For instance, Poynter’s Ren LaForme, who talks about the welcome inbox message from 1,100 miles away that’s there without fail every morning:
In my estimation, “Good Morning, Buffalo” is a perfect news product.
It’s both informative and interesting. It’s packed with voice … without losing its institutional authority. The combined packaging of news, politics, food, sports and other tidbits paints a lively portrait of a resurgent Western New York region.
I haven’t lived there in a decade, but this newsletter makes me care about Buffalo like I never left.
In prehistory, they also printed it overnight and drove it to your house before you woke up.
But even now, in our ridiculously over-newsed, Twitter-first existence, sometimes it’s nice to hand over the reins to a — wait for it — editor’s look at what matters. Your old town has a newsletter. Your current town, too. If you care about it, there’s a newsletter or, usually, newsletters for anything you care about. And some of them are amazingly good. Seek them out. You won’t be disappointed.