Good as Newsletter

Amid the instability of social media, email newsletters are back and booming

When Brett Chang arrives at The Peak’s office, he doesn’t know for certain what he’ll be publishing the following day. What he does know is that by tomorrow, 6 a.m. sharp, thousands of readers across Canada will wake up to an email notification that the latest issue of The Peak’s daily business newsletter has arrived. Energized, he enters the open-concept newsroom and readies himself for another day of production.

As the clock strikes 10 a.m., the six-person editorial team cannot afford to waste time—three stories are to be published at 6 p.m. “These are the types of stories that people would like to talk to their colleagues or their friends about at work or over drinks,” says Chang. At The Peak, the focus in the process of story selection is, “What do Canadian readers need to know about business?” Often, they’re trying to pick stories that both traditional and nontraditional outlets might cover. “They’re a bit different,” he says, “but we think are still very relevant to our readers.”

In a flash, half an hour has ticked by. Each member of the editorial team has around 30 minutes to scour the web and filter out the best, most interesting information for readers, often searching traditional business sources such as The Globe and Mail, the Financial Times, and Bloomberg. At 10:30 a.m., the editorial meeting begins, either virtually or in person. Blink and you’ll miss it—the pitching begins. As writers hurl out, the stories that will make the cut are picked out while others are locked away in the vault. By meeting’s end, the team has found their top three. Promptly, these are assigned to the staff on the newsletter team. After the stories have been finalized, they’re given a copyediting read-through. Simultaneously, a fact-checker painstakingly picks apart content, validates information, clarifies text with sources, and ensures style and copy accuracy. The newsletter is ready to appear in inboxes across Canada the next day.

Amid an unstable Canadian journalism environment, newsletters like The Peak swoop down from all angles to save Canadian readers. Their content ranging from news to entertainment, newsletters provide reliable and accessible information, helping readers distill what’s real and what isn’t amid total information overload.

 

Old format, new tricks

Research by literature and media scholar Rachael Scarborough King suggests that the humble newsletter dates to the 1400s, predating email by a solid five centuries. Venetian subscribers back then received handwritten letters up to twice a week from writers who compiled the week’s interesting events for their readers. Often, the handwriting would change in the middle of a newsletter, showing the type of mass production at work. While some letters formally addressed readers with “sir” and a dateline, others were friendly and formatted like a personal letter.

Now, diminished faith and low trust in traditional news have resulted in audiences seeking out content from reporters they know and believe, resulting in the renewed popularity of the old-fashioned newsletter. Once written off as “low-tech and unfashionable,” a 2020 report by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that the email newsletter has become “increasingly valuable” to publishers looking to build engagement with readers.

Email newsletters were survived by journalists hoping to reach audiences in their inboxes rather than through an algorithmic middleman

After the advent of social media messaging platforms like Facebook and professional messaging platforms like Slack, the idea may have been that email’s popularity would die out. Instead, a 2020 study of newsletter consumption in Belgium found that newsletters experienced a resurgence in popularity for reasons including the reliability of their material and enhanced audience engagement. It further found that email newsletters were revived by individual journalists who were hoping to reach audiences straight in their inboxes rather than through an algorithmic middleman. “You are not dependent on any channel or platform,” says Chang. Throughout the 2010s, many media companies that popped up relied on social media sharing. “We wanted to own that relationship with our audience directly without any platforms in between,” Chang continues. “That eliminated the risk of being banned or the algorithm changing.”

Also, a 2023 Statista report found that email is Canadians’ most common online activity, with 86 percent spending their time online either checking or replying to emails—surpassing banking and social media by 19 and 27 percentage points respectively. In this case, outlets go to where consumers already are—their inboxes.

Created in 1971 by American computer programmer Ray Tomlinson, the initial idea was that email would allow computer users to send one another messages in real time. Since its inception, it has become the internet version of a cockroach—as far as we can tell, it is unkillable.

Social media entered the field alongside email with the advent of LinkedIn and Friendster in 2002 and Myspace in 2003, a few of the first social media sites to gain a significant amount of popularity. According to a poll conducted by Pollara, as of July 2023, 43 percent of Canadians were getting much of their news from social media, with only 10 percent from email newsletters.

This shift was not without drawbacks. A 2018 MIT study found that fake news spreads significantly faster than real news on X (formerly Twitter), with false news reports being 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than factual ones. Users also have no way to know what pieces of information are accurate or doctored unless X or other users make it clear a tweet may potentially be misinformation, which isn’t guaranteed. Community notes on X, a feature that allows contributors to provide context for posts that may be misleading, can be helpful, though these are never assured to appear on misleading posts.

Furthermore, a shortage of news that readers feel is both trustworthy and optimistic can push them away. Since 2015, studies have been showing more readers avoiding the news, for fear of the catastrophic events being reported and with no solutions offered. Trust is declining as well. According to the University of Oxford and Reuters Institute Digital Digital News Report 2023, in 2023, the overall trust level in news was at an all-time low of 40 percent, down from 55 percent in 2016. Out of fear or disbelief, audiences are pulling back, making it difficult for outlets to reach them.

Canadians who are used to receiving their news via social media find themselves in a precarious situation. Canadian journalism took quite the hit after Bill C-18, better known as the Online News Act, became law last June. The Government of Canada enacted the law to “enhance fairness in the economic relationship between news businesses and online platforms.” Bill C-18 subjects search engines and social media platforms earning over $1 billion a year in global revenue to a form of link tax—a small fee for every news story that users in Canada click on their platforms. Meta retaliated by banning Canadian news from Facebook and Instagram last August, effectively wiping Canadian journalism from millions of social media feeds.

Perhaps consequently, both news organizations and their readers have returned to the accessible newsletter format. Aside from informing readers, organizations also get them into the habit of consuming news daily—exclusively from their platform. “It’s a win-win for everybody,” says Sherina Harris, newsletters manager for Torstar Corporation. She says that for publications like the Toronto Star, they also give readers a sneak peek to the content published by the publication before committing to paid subscriptions. “People were accustomed to seeing news on their social media,” says Harris, who also believes newsletters are a great way to fill the void. “Having that all in one place from a trusted news organization, knowing that it’s factual and accurate, is beneficial from a reader’s perspective.”

 

Newsletters from the editors

Ping! A notification tone chirps out from devices across the country. It’s Friday, 7:23 a.m., and the December 8, 2023, edition of CBC’s Morning Brief greets tens of thousands of readers across Canada. “Here’s what you need to know to get the day started,” reads the grey text situated underneath the bright, glowing CBC-red header. Today’s first headline reads, “Trudeau losing some top Muslim donors over Mideast war,” followed by a long-form article about wildlife preservation in British Columbia. The In Brief section is next, summarizing the day’s top stories into a digestible paragraph, with links to each full story. It takes as little as a few minutes to catch up on current affairs.

Matters are less relaxed in the Morning Brief newsroom. The next issue beckons and a team of writers, producers, and copy editors huddles over the day’s topics. They review upcoming “CBC exclusive and enterprise stories” for upcoming newsletters. “I don’t think email is going away anytime soon,” says Andree Lau, senior director of streaming and publishing at CBC News. “It’s a very direct and consistent way to reach a loyal audience.” Newsletters have always been part of CBC’s strategy to reach Canadian audiences, Lau says, but in the wake of Bill C-18 they have become an effective alternative for Canadians who find the transition from social media difficult. “What newsletters reminded people of is that it’s easy. It will come to you when you need it, and you can go to it when it’s convenient for you.”

Another big newsletter draw, says Lau, is Mind Your Business, CBC’s “weekly look at what’s happening in the worlds of economics, business and finance” newsletter written by Lau’s colleague and senior business reporter, Peter Armstrong. As with newsletters of yore, consumers have the choice of signing up for something like Morning Brief—a newsletter of record—or Mind Your Business, something designed to feel like you’re interacting with a trusted confidant, among other newsletters from CBC.

This friendlier, informal approach to reaching Canadian audiences is a priority for Chang and his team at The Peak as well. In 2022, he noticed two things about his peers’ news consumption habits. One, they would often go to American news sources. And two, many weren’t getting news from more traditional sources such as Forbes or Bloomberg, but publications with daily newsletters such as Morning Brew or theSkimm.

After a bit of digging, Chang found out why. “The way American newsletters talked about business news was just faster, more accessible, with less jargon,” he says. They were making financial and business news more accessible by delivering comprehensible content straight to subscribers’ inboxes.

An email delivered to inboxes provides affordable access to online news for consumers, as well as greater interactivity for publications. There’s no news hunting or worrying about the reliability of information. “There’s a really significant sense of just being overwhelmed by information,” says Adrian Ma, associate professor at the Toronto Metropolitan University School of Journalism. Readers don’t have the bandwidth to dissect every piece of news that comes their way, he says. This is especially true on social media, which he describes as “rife with disinformation and misinformation.” Newsletters offer a more personalized experience than traditional media that puts a stop to the information overload. And research affirms that the constant barrage of information from every platform has made readers exhausted, depressed, and afraid. With newsletters, readers can catch up without becoming burnt out.

 

Xtra, Xtra, read all about it!

It’s a cool November day as Angela Mullins sits down for a chat at a wobbly wooden table at Page One Coffee Bar near the TMU campus. The editorial director of Pink Triangle Press, which publishes Xtra, an online magazine that covers 2SLGBTQIA+ culture, politics, relationships, and health, she sheds her black vest, leaving her in a blue tie-dye hoodie. As music floats out of café speakers, she explains what newsletters look like at Xtra, which originally launched 40 years ago as a community guide pamphlet. “With newsletters, you’re not just putting something out, hoping that somebody will want it,” she says, lauding the form’s ability to establish a direct connection with preinvested readers.

Mullins says subscribing to any of Xtra’s four weekly newsletters is simple. The flagship, Xtra Weekly, is a selection of the magazine’s best stories and a standard roundup of what’s been posted in the past week: from top stories to breaking 2SLGBTQIA+ news. Wander+Lust and Pink Ticket cover queer travel content, while Wig! shares all things drag with a readership around the world. “Strategies are really, really changing with the ways we connect with audiences,” Mullins says, believing the newsletter is especially good for making a “one-to-one connection” with readers. Although the publication already knows who its readers are and why they read their content, the reach must be as broad as possible.

Xtra demonstrates how successful newsletters can be beyond the realms of business and breaking news. The format has a built-in subscribed audience, meaning creators don’t need to convince readers to care about what they’re posting, Mullins says. Readers know what to expect and rely on newsletters for information relevant to the day-to-day lives of the queer community—queer and trans politics, for instance, and sexual health—which Mullins says is often “critical to people’s lives and transitions.”

Despite this newsletter success, publications such as Xtra and The Peak that have specific audiences can remain wary of the power of algorithms to promote—or ban—content, and its effect on audience engagement. Xtra’s mission is to “queer the conversation,” which Mullins says algorithmic robots may not like. “A robot behind a screen and a third-party platform doesn’t quite know what to do with your content, because in some way it’s different,” she says. Shadowbanning, a type of social media content moderation, refers to the practice of reducing visibility of posts from everyone else except for the poster. A shadowbanned account can still post but, unbeknownst to the poster, no one can see their content except for them. While many social media sites still deny employing this practice, it can be detrimental to an alternative publication, such as Xtra, which doesn’t fit the mould. “You can’t control that algorithm,” says Mullins. “You can’t control what they do.” At least with newsletters, control returns to publications. They curate content specifically for people who have already agreed to see it without worrying about censorship from the algorithm.

Mullins says strategies are really changing for how publications connect with audiences. “If it’s your inbox, if it’s an SMS, if it’s a push notification, if it’s TikTok, it’s got to come to people.” However, the format is not perfect. “I often refer to it as a bit of one-and-done,” she says with a chuckle, pointing out that people typically don’t hold onto newsletters after reading them. “It’s not like a magazine, where you can pick it up and finish it later,” she says. “Usually, you open it once.” Still, newsletters have their benefits over other forms of direct engagement, like push notifications. A newsletter sits in readers’ inboxes until they get a chance to read it.

Gone are the days of leafing through stacks upon stacks of glossy magazines at specialty stores, searching in vain for a single column

Newsletter naysayers may argue that if someone clicks the first link on your newsletter to read a story, they’re gone. Mullins agrees there’s no guarantee that they’re coming back to read the rest, but she considers this as more of a challenge than a drawback.

There’s a crucial distinction to be made between delivering good, appealing content and bombarding subscribers with notifications. Frequency does not a good newsletter make—in fact, a newsletter with a clear focus and purpose that only goes out once a week is more likely to enhance readership than a newsletter filled with vague content that goes out multiple times a week. But Mullins says it depends on the audience and what they want. “I’m not reaching broadly,” says Mullins. “I’m curating for a narrow experience.”

A newsletter normal

Direct control and interaction with readers is also alluring for independent journalists on platforms like Substack, which burst onto the scene in 2017, promising creators lucrative amounts of cash for humble, subscription-based newsletters. Many who took the leap developed a loyal audience, finding a niche amid the sea of content online. Jeremy Appel is one of these journalists, also earning some additional income from freelancing. Appel’s newsletter, The Orchard, centres progressive news with a focus on the intersection of politics, media, and corporate power. For Appel, the major benefit is having complete control over what gets published. For instance, if he writes a story that doesn’t get picked up by any other outlet, he can always publish it on his Substack.

On the other hand, Appel admits that platforms like Substack suffer from a lack of useful oversight. When a journalist is independently publishing, he says, there isn’t an opportunity for multiple stages of professional editing. “I would have a friend edit it.” But people have jobs, and so his friends might miss things. That said, working with editors occasionally means making changes he might disagree with, as the final say wouldn’t be his to make. At least with The Orchard, Appel gets to see his creative vision through. “In this case,” he says, “you have that kind of freedom.”

 

Bookmarked

American music critic Robert Christgau’s Consumer Guide launched in The Village Voice in 1969. In this monthly column, he has rated and reviewed recently released albums and, after enough listens, awarded them a letter grade. More than half a century later, on a warm day last November at Creeds Coffee Bar at the edge of Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood, Tim Powis slowly sifts through Christgau’s Substack music newsletter, And It Don’t Stop. A retired freelance journalist, Powis says, “I’m quite old-fashioned in my news-gathering habits,” meaning he still prefers his morning newspaper and broadcast over social media. And yet, he was attracted to Christgau’s Substack newsletter. Initially, when he began to seek out Christgau’s work in the Voice, it was difficult to get your hands on a copy if you weren’t physically in New York City. The newsletter has changed all that. “I’ve always felt a connection to Christgau’s work,” Powis says. “It’s a nice way of keeping up with him, and it gets emailed to me, so I don’t have to go anywhere.”

Gone are the days of leafing through stacks upon stacks of glossy magazines at specialty stores, searching in vain for a single column. Now, the content comes to him, announced with a quick pop-up notification. “It’s always been the format,” he says of the Consumer Guide, sipping his coffee. The only difference is, it is easier to access now, as proved by the pages of saved newsletters in his email. An article can be buried online, and a printed column can be lost to time or the recycling bin. The newsletters, safely tucked away in Powis’s inbox or saved in a Word document—they aren’t going anywhere, anytime soon.