Against Gawker nostalgia: Welcome to media_gossip
Plus: GQ, The Drift, Patreon vs. Substack, and more.
My favorite part of working at any media company is the inevitable Slack channel dedicated to industry news and gossip. For years I’ve said that if I wasn’t writing Embedded, my newsletter would basically be that: a shamelessly navel-gaze-y report detailing whatever media workers are talking about, my thoughts on it all, and a cheeky blind item or two thrown in for good measure. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I realized the two newsletters were not mutually exclusive. Embedded routinely publishes media criticism that gets just as much, and sometimes more, engagement as our internet culture coverage. And so, here’s media_gossip, modeled after my favorite Slack channels, sent directly to your inbox every Friday.
Paid subscribers get full access (it is gossip, after all), but those who are decidedly not interested in what a bunch of journalists think about each other (my husband) can go ahead and click here to toggle this sub-newsletter off while still staying subscribed to Embedded itself. I won’t be offended. Media_gossip is for the real sickos only. —Kate
It wouldn’t be a media newsletter launch without a little scoop, and here’s one from me, Nick. I am leaving GQ, where I have been the site director for a little over three years, at the end of the month. Making a men’s magazine in the shadow of the manosphere—and at the dawn of a less timid and self-important era in media—has honestly been the most fun I’ve had in my career. I love my friends at GQ and wish them the best!
If you want to hear any more about that, you’ll have to reply to this email and ask. But I can share one non-GQ thing from this week that I had a small hand in: The launch of Living for the City, a show about music hosted by the great Hanif Abdurraqib (watch or listen). —Nick
