No days off.
How newsletter writers from Joanna Goddard to Andrew Ross Sorkin take vacation.
Good morning, everyone.
Two podcasts I enjoyed this week were brenda’s recent episode about effort and The Cutting Room Floor’s latest episode on envy. It’s illuminating and slightly jarring to hear creators (podcasters, editors, whatever you want to call these two women) pull back the curtain on their vulnerabilities in this complex and evolving industry. Topics discussed include hiring people to do hair and makeup in order to present well at parties and fashion shows, and the reactions peers have when you have a career win.
Today’s newsletter includes: 21 newsletter writers on how/if they take time off, the Goldman Sachs office celebrated the SpaceX IPO with moon-shaped macarons, and Jeff Bezos claims AI will lead to a golden age.
Feed Me’s next West Coast edition comes out next week. Have a story you’d like to be included? Reply to this email or text the Anonymous Tip Line: (646) 494-3916 🏙️🌴☀️
No days off.
Around this time of year on Substack, you start to see phrases like “hiatus” and “vacation publishing plan” and “I’m taking some time offline to enjoy my life.” The newsletter economy has evolved to a place where the reader contract (particularly for paid newsletters) is premised on daily or near-daily sends. In some ways, the expectation of an uninterrupted flow of content is nothing new: readers presume newspapers, magazines, and sites of all kinds will produce and publish new material constantly. But most of those operations are built by teams of more than one. Whereas in the nascent newsletter economy, writers rarely have colleagues or contributors to sub in off the bench (Knicks fever running hot today). So how do these writers take time off and still satisfy the deal they’ve made with their readers? Do they even remember how to vacation? What happens if you take ten fingers off the keyboard to swim in the ocean? (For obvious reasons, these questions are of great interest to me as we approach the season when most normal people take at least some time off, and Europeans put up their OOO message all August.)
To indulge my curiosity (and help me think through my own relationship to Real Life), I asked 21 newsletter writers (most of whom send several times a week, if not daily) how and if they take time off for summer vacation, and what their plans are this summer. The responses painted a vivid picture of a corner of the media industry where audience appetite seems to be endless, and writers aren’t even thinking about requesting vacation days. After all, who would they even ask besides their readers themselves?
Respondents include: Lenny Rachitsky, Casey Lewis, Matt Belloni, Delia Cai, Brendon Holder, John Fulton, Matt Levine, laura reilly, Lachlan Cartwright, CJ Gustafson, Emily Wilson, Kaitlin Phillips, Jim Waterson, Emilia Petrarca, Max Read, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Emily Gould, tasbeeh herwees, Panayiota Soutis, Melanie Masarin and Joanna Goddard on taking time off as a newsletter writer.
LENNY RACHITSKY (Lenny’s Newsletter)
Do you take time off when you go on summer vacation? If so, who manages the newsletter? If not, what is it like to always be online?
I don’t take a summer vacation. Meaning I don’t take large blocks of time off. What I’ve done over the years is introduce PTO for myself, where I can just take certain weeks off, which took a while for me to get comfortable with because people are paying a monthly fee for the newsletter. If I’m not delivering on what I think is worthwhile for that cost, I’ve always been afraid of taking too much time off. I found that no one really actually cares, so I’ve just kind of slowly added more and more opportunity for me to take weeks off. I just haven’t been able to take more than a couple weeks off in a row and not feel like things are going to start to fall apart.
Where are you going this summer?
Not going anywhere this summer. Just working, working, working.
CASEY LEWIS (After School by Casey Lewis)
Do you take time off when you go on summer vacation? If so, who manages the newsletter? If not, what is it like to always be online?
I always take a few days off around the July 4th holiday, because my birthday is the day after, and the feeds are quiet since everyone else is offline, too. I’d always rather take an afternoon here and there than a full week. The nice thing about what we do is that you can work from anywhere. I think I haven’t burned out (despite being constantly online) because I do a lot of my work outside, whether at a beach or in a backyard or on my balcony in Brooklyn. I recently found a lounge chair that has a sun shield at MoMA and is perfect for laptopping outdoors. It was expensive, but it’s boosted my productivity so much that it’s proven to be worth it.
Where are you going this summer?
I’m going to Cannes for work, though I plan to bring a swimsuit and sneak in a few hours at the beach. Later this summer, I’m doing a few roadtrips — from NYC to my hometown in Missouri, where I will lay by a pool and eat Tastee Freeze twist cones (crunch coat, if I’m lucky) and catch fireflies, and then, after that, NYC to Maine to visit my brother. I love swimming at Higgins Beach at the very end of August, when the ocean feels like bathwater.