The Lifehacker Staff’s Favourite Email Newsletters

Twitter and Facebook and news alerts all prove it: The best form of one-to-many communication is the email newsletter. The Lifehacker staff follows newsletters for morning briefings, unique takes on tech, or personal stories. These are our favourites.

Photo by AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar

Staff Writer Patrick Austin’s Picks

• NextDraft: Dave Pell’s title of “Managing Editor, Internet” is a pretty accurate description of NextDraft as a whole. Pell’s quick wit and excellent taste in things you should care about (in addition to stories more interesting than the rest of the day’s news) make it one of the two newsletters I allow access to my inbox.
• Track Changes: A newsletter from Postlight, a digital product studio in NYC. If you’re a nerd, or have a passing interest in how the web works, from development to design to operations just below the gloss and glam of your Instagram page, subscribe. You’ll get a weekly delivery of the most interesting design, and engineering stories, tools and services.

Parenting Editor Michelle Woo’s Picks

• Quartzy: While primarily a highlight reel of recent Quartz lifestyle stories, it reads as a personal letter from a smart friend. Newsletter curator Jenni Avins melds life observations with links that are worth my time – a welcomed detour from the standard roundup of headlines.
• PocketHits: Pocket’s daily digest is a standard roundup of headlines, but what makes it exciting (yes, I am one of the few who actually get excited by email newsletters) is that it can feature content from anywhere, from the New York Times to personal blogs – whatever’s the most interesting. The editors look at what’s being saved across Pocket and handpick what they believe everyone should read. (To subscribe, sign up with Pocket, go to your notification settings, and select a frequency under “Pocket Hits”.)

Editor in Chief Melissa Kirsch’s Pick

• NextDraft: It comes every day at 3PM where I’m located, and it’s like an alarm bell telling me the day is, if not almost over, then close to almost over, which I’ll take. The newsletter features the 10 biggest stories of the day, whether they be the biggest news stories or the main things people are talking about on Twitter. Somehow Dave Pell knows exactly what I am interested in and he presents it with a gentle point of view that doesn’t make me hate him. It’s the only daily newsletter I subscribe to that I am not ambivalent about.

Personal Finance Writer Alicia Adamczyk’s Picks

• She doesn’t send it that often, but I always look forward to Buzzfeed culture writer Bim Adewunmi’s tinyletter, …the fuck is this?, which is filled with beautiful writing and musings.
• Kara Cutruzzula’s Brass Ring Daily helps me be more productive.
• I open at least three links from Apartment Therapy‘s newsletter each day.

Staff Writer Nick Douglas’s Picks

• Helen: A Handbasket: In her very occasional newsletter, food writer Helen Rosner introduced me to Roberto, which is now my favourite soup. A month later, she roasted the 1954 film Brigadoon for its “fundamental failure of narrative worldbuilding”. (Brigadoon is about a town that only wakes up for one day of each century, which Rosner points out would be not peaceful but terrifying.) The roast is hilarious even if you, like me, had barely ever heard of Brigadoon.
• Shatner Chatner: Mallory Ortberg (Slate‘s “Dear Prudence” columnist and co-founder of The Toast) recently started charging money for her email newsletter Shatner Chatner and you know what, it’s worth it. Ortberg specialises in historical satire, and her latest issue is based on the Regency era: “It’s weird how, in this era, everyone seems to have guns but we’re also still kind of doing the sword thing? Do I have that right?”
• Like This: When Meghan O’Connell’s upcoming motherhood memoir Now We Have Everything makes you cry and laugh and have babies, you’ll want to go back and read her newsletter’s archives. You will whisper again and again, “Yes, that is what it is like.”
• Can’t complain: You will also say “Yes, that is what it is like” at the personal stories in Emily Gould’s memoir-style newsletter, but you’ll say it louder, maybe smacking the table. Try the brief issue “Mommy is a monster.”

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