The Great American Pastime of Having a Newsletter

The great newsletter renaissance, ushered in by Substack and Patreon, is the latest entry in a long history of hobbyists and aspiring writers sending self-published material into the universe.

By Tobias Carroll

Spend enough time on the internet and you’ll become aware of the fact that everyone has a newsletter. Journalists and novelists use Substack or Mailchimp to send news of works in progress or a look behind the scenes at a long investigative article; Patreon makes it easy to charge for email updates. Some digital newsletters feel like publications unto themselves, like Graydon Carter’s AirMail, which Ruth Graham at Slate memorably described as “a fat glossy magazine folded awkwardly and crammed into your inbox.”

We’re in the midst of a renaissance: newsletters are the new blogs, or the new podcasts, or the new websites. But while some of the tech companies helping distribute newsletters are relatively recent, writers have published independent circulars as a means of making an income or establishing a name for themselves for centuries. These DIY publications can invigorate debates, industries, or fields by amplifying outside perspectives and bringing new readers into the fold.

***

There are thousands of broadsides archived in the Library of Congress: everything from studies of earthquakes to updates in tax laws to Elks Lodge reading materials to poems by Phyllis Wheatley. These informal publications include some of the best-known American writers of the 18th and 19th centuries.

There’s Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack, the annual publication that Franklin wrote between 1732 and 1758 using the pseudonym Richard Saunders. At the time, almanacs were widely popular due to the information that they provided, including weather predictions and tidal charts; according to a JSTOR Daily article by Matthew Wills, they were one of the most well-read varieties of printed work in colonial America and Great Britain, second only to the Bible.

Franklin’s printing business handled the manufacture of the Almanack, which included aphorisms in addition to the practical knowledge it imparted. (One example: “There are three things extremely hard, steel, a diamond and to know one’s self.”) Franklin also included poetry and math problems within the Almanack — like the mix of any good blog. At its peak, the publication had a circulation of 10,000. A 2014 post at Content Marketing Institute argued, somewhat unconvincingly, that Poor Richard’s Almanack was “the oldest example of content marketing known to exist,” as it helped to promote Franklin’s work as a printer.

Franklin wasn’t the only notable historical figure to explore publishing. In 1847, the abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass published The North Star, a newspaper that covered the abolition movement. Douglass began publishing The North Star using the proceeds from a speaking tour he had conducted in Europe. Annual subscriptions cost two dollars, and the paper was published on a weekly basis, with a circulation of around 2,000. While the focus of The North Star was the abolition of slavery, it also included political arguments on other topics, such as the case against war with Mexico in 1848, and later expanded to women’s suffrage. The North Star name was recently revived by a group of journalists and historians led by Shaun King as a “grassroots media company meaning that we will be whatever the community helps us become,” approved by Douglass’s descendants.

Other independent publications, some from a single author and some from a group of like-minded collaborators, were business- or subculture-oriented. Among the biggest successes were The Bill James Baseball Abstracts, published from 1977 to 1988, and its spiritual successor, Baseball Prospectus, published from 1996 onwards. James sold the first edition of the Baseball Abstract —described as “sixty-eight single-sided pages, photocopied and stapled,” including some pieces written while he worked as a security guard at night — via an ad in The Sporting News. The Baseball Abstract offered new statistics to analyze how baseball is played and the skills of certain players. Citing the demands of the work, James stopped publishing the Baseball Abstract in 1988, though he continued to write books about his analysis of baseball and accepted a job with the Boston Red Sox in 2003 from which he recently retired.

Locus, a magazine covering science fiction, fantasy, and horror — the eight-time winner of the Hugo Award for best fanzine — began in 1968 as a single-page sheet. It was designed to raise awareness of an effort by a group based in Boston host the science fiction convention Worldcon. Locus’s founders originally intended it to run for a year, but co-founder Charles N. Brown kept the operation going, co-editing it with his first wife, Marsha Brown, in 1968 and 1969, and with his second wife, Dena Brown, from 1970 to 1977. The publication celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2018, and has grown into an non-profit organization. In addition to the magazine and website, it also promotes the genres it covers and manages at least one literary estate.

In the 1970s, wine critics Robert M. Parker, Jr. and Robert Finigan each launched publications dedicated to wine: Robert Finigan’s Private Guide to Wines, which initially focused on wines available in California and expanded to a national scope in 1977, and Parker’s The Wine Advocate, which debuted in 1978. Finigan’s newsletter lasted until 1990, though he continued to write about wine afterwards. Parker still writes about wine, and The Atlantic noted that “many people now believe that Robert Parker single-handedly changing the history of wine.” One influential critic’s tastes, showcased in a newsletter, have helped shape the ways wines are grown and sold. A positive review from Parker often causes the price of a bottle to increase.

Each of these areas— baseball statistics, science fiction, and wine — have grown into massive industries in the decades since these newsletters made their debuts, perhaps in part due to independent publishing’s role in fostering an engaged fanbase. These newsletters also democratized their fields: Parker was never formally trained as an oenologist, but became a leading voice in the wine industry. Bill James proved that a superfan with insight and plenty of time on their hands could revolutionize how a sport is played.

In 2020, you don’t need to operate a printing press or a photocopier to get your message out to the world; there are plenty of resources online that fill a similar role. History is full of people who have leveraged their own voices for fun and profit. Email newsletters are the latest iteration of something much older, and that’s a good thing for their staying power. Tech startups pushing new forms of media consumption might come and go, but newsletters are forever.

---