Substack

Please chime in here with your favorite of them. Politics, music, film etc. All appreciated.

As 'even bad pizza is still good,' the best substack remains terrible.

mine is good (bc i don’t update it)

Here's mine: Burning Ambulance

Mostly music, and mostly jazz and metal at that.

Subscribed!

I get Read Max, and a few music ones (some jazz writing, some weekly music roundups) -

Vinnie Sperazza (jazz drummer)
Deep Voices
Futurism Restated (Philip Sherburne)
No Tags (electronic music & culture, transcriptions from their podcast)
Sound + Vision (sporadic dance music culture stuff)
Scary Cool Sad Goodbye (Meghan Garvey midwest road trip scene reports)

I also subscribe to Sperrazza's and Sherburne's, and should subscribe to Garvey's; every time I read it it's great.

The Nelson George Mixtape is a good one

I subscribed to a bunch a couple of years ago when I was looking to scale back my Twitter use but wanted to stay abreast of What the Internet Was Talking About. My favorite as far as that goes is Today in Tabs (although the author is currently on hiatus because he's hiking the Appalachian Trail). Links I Would Gchat You If We Were Friends is another good link roundup (though not quite as fun to read). I like the way Garbage Day analyzes internet trends, though it sometimes covers subcultures/platforms that I have no interest in (Twitch streamers, e.g.). And then there's Read Max, of course, always a delight.

here's mine: https://hologramofthesenses.substack.com/

my recommended section consists of the only newsletters i actually read (i especially love deej's) besides phish essays

i never update but all four essays on there are very very good and i'm brewing the next one as we speak (prob an october jam)

A few others I subscribe to:

Parker Molloy (on politics/media)
Anne Helen Petersen (on culture)
Fran Magazine (Fran Hoepfner on whatever Fran is into)
The Reveal (Scott Tobias and Keith Phipps on film)
Off Message (Brian Beutler on politics)
Last Week's New Yorker Review
Breaking the News (James Fallows on politics/media)
One Thing (Kyle Chayka and Nate Gallant on culture)
Prestige Junkie (Katey Rich on film/TV awards)
The Mix (Robert Simonson on cocktails and food)
Hung Up (Hunter Harris on celeb culture)
What's Alan Watching? (Alan Sepinwall on TV)
Fluxblog (Matty Perps on music)
The Message Box (Dan Pfeiffer on politics)

NB: I have never actually paid for a newsletter, so I am getting the free version of all of these, which vary in terms of the amount of paywalled content.

Also, not all of these are hosted by Substack, but I assume you are looking for newsletters in general, regardless of platform.

oops, Parker Molloy's is called The Present Age, and Anne Helen Petersen's is Culture Study.

This recommendation is not specific to Substack, can apply to any publishing platform:

Make a pact with a fellow writer to proofread each other’s posts before they go up!

Everyone makes mistakes (including me) but some really egregious ones, like leaving a key word out of a headline, are starting to happen and it’s … painful.

(Not aimed at anyone who posts here btw)

Caitlin Dewey (of Links I Would Gchat You If We Were Friends) produced what seems like a
useful list of newsletter recommendations:

I borrowed a convention from chain emails and asked seven newsletter writers I love to send me the names of their favorite newsletters. I then emailed those writers for their favorites, then those favorites for their favorites, then THOSE favorites for their favorites … etc. 🫠

The resulting guide and network map include 135 newsletters recommended by more than 50 writers, spanning topics from animation to martial arts to Rhode Island food culture.

I heard about Blackbird Spyplane by Jonah Weiner and Erin Wylie, on that list as my son likes it for its offbeat niche clothes and fashion suggestions for men