Why "newsletter-shaped blogs" work better than blogs
A short essay on why moving the blog into the inbox revived independent writing, and what it might do next.
For about ten years, the blog was struggling. Personal sites were quiet. RSS readers were dying. The platforms had absorbed most of the writing energy on the internet.
Then the newsletter quietly fixed the blog.
A newsletter-shaped blog is just a blog whose primary distribution channel is the inbox instead of the feed. The format is almost identical, the technology is almost identical, the writers are often the same people. The difference is structural: a newsletter shows up where you already check every day, with no algorithm deciding whether it deserves to.
That tiny structural change has done a remarkable amount of work. Independent writers can charge a few dollars a month and make a living. Audiences are smaller but much more loyal. The pressure to optimize for virality is way down because virality isn't the distribution model.
Most newsletters are also archived as a website. Which means the same writing is, technically, also a blog. The two formats have quietly merged. The result is one of the healthiest periods independent writing has had in a long time.
If you want to support the open web with very little effort, find one writer you like and pay them a few dollars a month. That's the whole strategy.