Blogs and news roundups for writers and editors
Blog Roll
A+ blogs and newsletters, daily news roundups, gossip, opinions, series, watchdog reports, citizen journalism, and online magazines that help keep us up-to-date on news and issues
Focused on up-to-date news, opinions, commentary, must-reads, backgrounders, gossip, secrets, rants, and inside information, with links to blogs for special interests, such as health problems, as well. Blogs, gossip, opinions, watchdog reports, citizen journalism, daily news roundups, and online magazines that help keep us up-to-date on news, trends, and issues. Some newsletters listed, too. See also
---Blogs, newsletters, and podcasts about the book business (by agents, authors, editors, and publishing experts)
---About blogs and blogging
---All the top radio talk shows and podcasts (and a little TV)
---Podcasts of author interviews
---Podcasts and Zoom events about health, health care, medicine and medical science (comfortdying.com site)
---Making money doing podcasts
• Blog vs. Email Newsletter? Which Strategy Works Best? (Jeshua Zapata, Xzito, 9-5-18) A good explanation of the difference between the two. A blog stays on your website and can be seen by anyone. Blogs help you position yourself and your company as an industry expert. You send out your email newsletter by email to a specific group of people. Email newsletters can be sent out weekly and have a built-in audience. They allow you to track and target specific group of readers. People check their email daily (and rarely check all their favorite blogs). You can use an email newsletter to send people to your blog and you can use your blog to get people to sign up for your newsletter. In other words, it started out that you go to the blog, but the newsletter comes to you.
"If you don't blog daily, you won't build an audience, but email newsletters can be sent out weekly and have a built-in audience," says Philip Kaplan (a.k.a. Pud), who created his own email newsletter platform called TinyLetter. "And people check their email everyday. And people can reply to emails."... PUD "felt like resurrecting the email newsletter because he didn’t want to put the work into writing a blog." (quoted on Techcrunch)
• Agents & Books (Kate McKean's blog, with free and paid subcriptions.) New feature for paid subscribers: The Fifty Queries Club
• Alternet (an alternative to print news and columns/blogs)
• Andrew Zimmern's Spilled Milk, which I was drawn to by this piece: 5 Questions with Salad Warrior Emily Nunn The Dept. of Salad CEO defends the unsung hero of the culinary world (with great color photos of the salads).
• The Ankler Read How Richard Rushfield’s The Ankler Took on Hollywood (Joe Pompeo, Vanity Fair, 2-23) Rushfield "chronicles Hollywood in all of its naked theatricality, with a mischievous bent and a sardonic regard for the industry's towering egos." But can Rushfield and coconspirator Janice Min scale his scrappy newsletter into a big business?
• Antarctica. Among the Penguins (Noah Strycker's blog, 2008-2009)
• ars technica (news and reviews of technology)
• Arts & Letters Daily (top blog, from The Chronicle of Higher Education--great links for those who scorn tabloids)
• The Atlantic newsletters (the Atlantic Daily delivers enticing paragraphs about material I can read at length; I am afraid to look at the other offerings, as I'll never get any work done if I get those too).
• Atlas Obscura (online magazine and travel company that catalogs unusual and obscure travel destinations via user-generated content)
• Axios Gaming (e.g.,on Wordle's origin and other Axios newsletters.
• Axios Media Trends (Sara Fischer on trends reshaping the digital media ecosystem)
• Babel's Dawn (Edmund Blaire Bolles, a blog about the origins of speech)
• Bad Science (Ben Goldacre's blog)
• Bartosz Ciechanowski Interactive articles about physics, math, and engineering, with wonderful illustrations, as in Mechanical Watch (H/T The Browser)
• Before and After the Book Deal (Courtney Maum's newsletter of publishing advice)
• Between a Rock and a Hard Place (Caroline Cala Donofrio writing about relationships, jobs, fears, inspirations...). See Why I've Given Up on Success and it feels great. (H/T Abby Rasminsky)
• The Baseline Scenario (what happened to the global economy and what we can do about it)
• Big Matt Stoller on the history and politics of monopoly power.
• Big If True (non-partisan news and perspectives, analysis and stories that hold the government and public figures accountable)
• Big Think
• Bits About Money (Patrick McKenzie) Essays about tech, finance, and geekery. I found what he wrote about bank branches and what deposit insurance covers interesting.
• The Borowitz Report (The news, reshuffled. The New Yorker.) For example: Nation with Crumbling Bridges and Roads Excited to Build Giant Wall
• Brain Pickings (Maria Popova's free weekly digest of interestingness, which lives up to that claim). See Bruce Feiler's NY Times story She’s Got Some Big Ideas
• The Biopragmatist (David Ewing Duncan's blog on Technology Review)
• Blogs about the book business
• Book Slut
• Breaking Point (Supercast) This anti-establishment American news show brings together views from the left and right sides of the political spectrum (premium subscription $100 a year).
• Breaking the News (James Fallows' blog, arising from his book Breaking The News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy Well-informed, intelligent writing. See
---Media World, Part 1: Let Us See How the Sausage is Made.
---Learning from Disasters Why facing up to mistakes and learning where we erred is important.
---From the Mailbag The real payoff of the blogging world: engaging with informed readers.
• The Browser A curated newsletter--get five curated stories in your inbox each day (and they hook me nearly every time--for example, one linking to a video story about architecture designed to dry out a very wet house in Scotland. Free and paid versions.
• BuzzFeed shuts down Pulitzer Prize-winning newsroom, lays off 180 staff across the company (Angela Fu, Poynter, 4-20-23). See Buzzfeed (an American Internet news and entertainment company with a focus on digital media), which will keep its archive online, apparently. Samples: 23 Inexpensive "Shark Tank" Products People Actually Swear By (shopping) and Trump Disavowed Political Violence After the Pipe Bomb Scare But Also Blamed the Media (news).
• Buzz Machine (Jeff Jarvis, media pundit's pundit -- on news, journalism, google, and the like)
• CityLab (about the people creating the cities of the future--the biggest ideas and most pressing issues facing the world's metro areas and neighborhoods)
• C/Net (excellent tech product news, review, and video)
• Common Dreams (breaking news and views for the progressive community and excellent links)
• The Conscience of a Liberal (Paul Krugman, NY Times)
• The Consumerist (Consumer Reports consumer advocacy site)
• Consumers Union blogs
• Contentious.com (Amy Gahran on how we communicate online)
• The Conversation Excellent and varied. Academic rigor, journalistic flair.
• Coronavirus: reliable sources of updates ***
• Covering Health (blog of the Association of Health Care Journalists)
• John Oliver (The Guardian comedian on the latest news and features))
• Crooks and Liars (a politically left blog)
• The Daily (Paris Review blog)
• The Daily Beast (speedy take on news from around the world)
• Daily Kos (liberal political blog)
• The Daily Upside Stories from the best writers in financial news
• Dark Roasted Blend (Ari Avrams site, interesting visuals) See Best of and other look-backs, along left side of screen.
• Data Is Plural A weekly newsletter of useful/curious datasets.
• Dear Therapist Lori Gottlieb guides readers through the ordinary difficulties of human life.
• Defamer (Gawker's Hollywood gossip site)
• Democracy Now Independent global news. Common topics: Immigration, Israel & Palestine, Abortion, Gun Control, Environment, Police Brutality, Ukraine, Donald Trump.
• The Department of Salad Emily Munn's beautifully illustrated salad recipes
• Dirt: Deconstruct This A daily newsletter about entertainment online.
• The Dish (Andrew Sullivan and crew)
• Don't Eat Cat Food in Your Old Age (Kelley Armstrong on money, personal finance and life in between)
• Drafting the Past (Kate Carpenter's podcast about the craft of writing history. Each week, she interviews a historian about their writing process, tools, philosophies, and inspirations.)
• The Drudge Report
• Easily Distracted (Tim Burke on culture, politics, and academia)
• Economist's View (Mark Thoma)
• Education Writers Association news and blogs What's new in the world of education journalism?
• Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At? (archive) A solid tech and culture newsletter, readable online.
• engadget (techie gadgetland)
• Electric Lit's Scuttlebutt blog (expanding the influence of literature in popular culture)
• Epiphanies (the late Brian Doyle's blog on The American Scholar). This one, "A Mohawk in the House" (Memories of a pretty good day), I learned of from Joe Slocum's tribute on Essay Daily (12-22-18)
• Estee Klar on autism (was The Joy of Autism)
• Extra! Extra! IRE's guide to the latest investigative reporting
• Firedoglake (Jane Hamsher's progressive news site, online community, and action organization, shut down 8-1-15 for health reasons, now archived as Shadowproof)
• First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing (with Mitzi Rapkin) In-depth interviews with fiction, non-fiction, essay, and poetry writers as they discuss their work, their craft, and the literary arts.
• FishbowlNY (covering the pulse of NY Media)
• Five Myths Excellent series in the Washington Post's Outlook section. Must-read on specific topics.
• FiveThirtyEight (aka 538),a polling aggregation website with a blog created by analyst Nate Silver. The website takes its name from the number of electors in the United States electoral college.
• 43 Folders (Merlin Mann's website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work)
• Freakonomics (to keep the conversation going)
• GalleyCat (news on book publishing, Adweek)
• Garden Rant (uprooting the gardening world)
• Gawker (Manhattan media news and gossip, shut down by Hulk Hogan lawsuit--see Jeffrey Toobin's story in the New Yorker.
• Gizmodo (evaluations of gadgets and consumer products)
• Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog
• Gladwell.com (beyond the Tipping Point)
• Global Post
• Good News Network, an American online newspaper which publishes positive and uplifting news stories.
• Matthew J. Goodwin A deep dive into geo-political risk and volatility.
• GovLoop (blog and social networking for government)
• Greater Good Magazine (science-based insights for a better life)
• Guerrilla News
• Head Butler (reviews of books, music, movies, products -- and short takes)
• Healthcare 100 (top blogs on health & medicine, as selected by eDrugSearch
• HealthNewsReview (health stories, evaluated)
• Heated A newsletter for people who are pissed off about the climate crisis.
•*** Heather Cox Richardson ("Letters from an American" An intelligent, well-written, insightful newsletter about the history behind today's politics. Subscription only, both a free and a paid version (the latter of which gives you the ability to join reader comments on her posts, which create a great sense of community, writes Hamish Mackenzie ("On Substack"). Highly recommended, and also available the next day as a podcast. See Heather Cox Richardson Offers a Break From the Media Maelstrom. It’s Working. (NY Times, 12-27-20) She is the breakout star of the newsletter platform Substack, doing the opposite of most media as she calmly situates the news of the day in the long sweep of American history. Occasional photos are by Peter Ralston, studio in Rockport, Maine.
• History News Network
• History blogs (History New Network) and History blogroll
• Hit & Run (Reason Magazine staff commentary on news of the day)
• The Hollywood Gossip
• The Honest Broker Ted Gioia's guide to music, books, arts, media & culture.
• Hot Pod A newsletter from The Verge that delivers news, analysis, and opinions on the audio industry.
• How to Read This Chart (Washington Post newsletter) A weekly dive into the data behind the news. Each Saturday, national correspondent Philip Bump makes and breaks down charts explaining the latest in economics, pop culture, politics and more.
• Huffington Post (liberal American news & features aggregator)
• The Hustle (an email each morning with all the tech and business news you need to know for the day). See How the Hustle built a 100,000-subscriber email newsletter for millennial bros (Jemma Brackebush, Digiday, 7-1-16).
• I can has cheezburger? (funny cat pictures)
• Informed Comment (Juan Cole's blog on the Middle East, history, and religion)
• Inside Elections (Nathan L. Gonzales) Non-partisan analysis in a non-partisan online newsletter covering U.S. House, Senate, and gubernatorial campaigns, presidential politics, and political developments.
• InstaPundit.com (U.S. political blog by Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds)
• The Intercept ("fearless adversarial journalism that holds the powerful accountable")
• The Interpreter Max Fisher's column for the New York Times. Start here: The Era of Misinformation Is Here To Stay
• Jalopnik(for car lovers)
• Jason Kottke (about design, food, weblogs, and living in New York City) by producer of fine hypertext products
• Jezebel(celebrity, sex, fashion for women)
• J.A. Konrath (a $uccessful writer writing for writers)
• The Journeyman (Marlon Weems) A newsletter about the intersection of American culture, politics, and anti-Black racism. Storytelling filled with witty analogies, movie references, life experiences, and a dash of sarcasm.
• KFF Health News (formerly known as Kaiser Health News, KHN), is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. It's one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism. Its daily First Edition and Morning Briefing emails give you a look at all the important news of the day. Its topic and regional emails round up its coverage on such issues as Medicare, Medicaid, rural health, aging, and health costs. Sign up here.
• Language Log, on language and linguistics
• Lifehacker, techie tips for making life easier (MB calls it "geek porn").
• The Latest (National Press Club Journalism Institute) A daily newsletter (Monday-Thursday afternoons) with journalism news, gossip, how-to’s, tips and best practices, and career advice. (Subscribe here and get access to archives.
• Letters of Note (Shaun Usher's delightful newsletter featuring letters, but it feels as if it belongs here). Start with I Like Words, the free or paid version.
• Letty Cottin Pogrebin’s Newsletter (politics, culture, humor, women, feminism, Jews, Israel-Palestine & more)
• Literary Hub (the best of the literary Internet)
• Lit Hub Radio (podcasts, audiobooks, and more)
• Local Matters (the best in local journalism, from Investigative Reporters and Editors). A weekly roundup of the best investigative and watchdog reporting from local newsrooms around the country. Don't miss this one, and you can search its archives to catch up on old stories.
• The Long Read (The Guardian), some in audio. For example, Do we need a new theory of evolution? (Stephen Buranyi, 6-28-22) And The Best of the Long Reads in 2021.
• Longreads.com A different version, with its "Best 5" features and its Best Longreads of 2021 (for example), with "best" in several categories and from different publishers).
• Making Sense (Sam Harris's podcast). This link takes you to a fascinating discussion with Andrew Sullivan about why Trump has been so successful despite being a horrible person. H/T Romy.
• Martha Beck, or follow her on Facebook
• McGarvey's Words (business thought pieces)
• McSweeney's column contest winners
• MediaGazer, the day's must-read media news on a single page
• MediaPost (industry coverage for advertising and marketing professionals)
• Medium (See also: Why Medium Failed (Simon Owens' Media Newsletter, 7-20-22) "What made Medium so appealing in its early days was that it applied social media network effects to longform writing."
• The Moment We Met Blog.Interviews with the participants of We'll Meet Again (hosted by Ann Curry on PBS) These two caught my attention: Zoe Nicholson: 'The Springboard of My Courage Was Sonia Johnson' In 1982 Zoe Nicholson and Sonia Johnson with a group of women at the state capitol building in Springfield, IL participated in a hunger fast for equal rights and an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In 'Captain Literally Made the Impossible Possible' Lynn Rippelmeyer and Emilie Jones meet again to reminisce about being two of the first women to captain airplanes.
• Momma Said (Jen Singer's site as a place for "moms on the edge of desperation to laugh and linger")
• Monday Morning Coffee (Nate Hoffelder) Love his links.
• MongoBay (a conservation news service, "from nature's frontline")
• The Morton Report (TMR) (Skip Press's revealing takedown on celebrity Scientology). See also Black Scientology ("Planned Darkness").
• Mr. Magazine (journalism professor Samir Husni's blog on what's new in the magazine business)
• My Little Bird The grownup girl's guide to kick-ass living (fashion, beauty, well-being, design, food, culture)
• Nathan Bransford blog (by the author of "How to Write a Novel" and the "Jacob Wonderbar" books)
• The Nervous Breakdown (Brad Listi)
• Neurodiversity (Kathleen Seidel's site on autism)
• The New Inquiry ( cultural and literary criticism)
• Newser (news and breaking stories--read less, know more)
• NewPages Guide to Blogs & Daily News Sites (outstanding set of links on Book, Writing, & Reading, general; Libraries; Media; Indie Publisher blog; MFA blogs; News Sites We Like; Politics & Media; Blogs of Independent Bookstores; Literary Magazine blogs;
• The New Rationalist (Reason in the Face of Dogma)
• NewsHounds (We watch Fox so you don't have to!)
• Newswise (for journalists or members)
• New York Times guide to good blogs: Blogs 101 (good blogs in several categories, per Rich Meislin)
• New York Times blog directory (of Times blogs)
• New York Times newsletters (by email)
• Next Draft (Dave Pell's curated daily news items
• Nice News Wake up to good news. Sign up for a daily email of only positive news in your inbox each morning.
• Nieman Storyboard showcases exceptional narrative journalism and explores the future of nonfiction storytelling.
• Nieman Watchdog (questions the press should ask)
• Notes from Aboveground (RONBC)
• Now and Then (Vox Media podcast) Award-winning historians Heather Cox Richardson and Joanne Freeman use their encyclopedic knowledge of US history to help inform today’s most pressing challenges.
• NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour (podcast about the buzziest movies, TV, music, books, videogames, etc.)
• Observer, news and gossip about Manhattan
• Off the Bus (citizen journalists on the elections)
• The Optimist (Washington Post blog of good news)
• Off the Kuff (Charles Kuffner on political news of Houston and Texas)
• On the Books (Margot Atwell's newsletter exploring the intersection of money and publishing)
• Out of It (Mary Gaitskill), as interviewed in Mary Gaitskill Has Come Online on the limits of sympathy, the pleasures and perils of the Internet, and the ethics of using someone else’s story (Alexandra Schwartz, New Yorker, 8-14-22)
• Overheard in New York
• Page Turner (New Yorker blog) Criticism, contentions, and conversation inspired by books and the writing life.
• Paris Review Daily
• Platformer Covers social networks and their relationships with the world. News at the intersection of Silicon Valley and democracy. One big idea a day, delivered straight to your inbox at a reliable time, without any ads, affiliate links, pop-ups, SEO bait.
• Ploughshares (Emerson College, Boston)
• The Politics of Everything (hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene, The New Republic) A podcast about the intersection of culture, politics, and media. See, for example, How Disney World Struck a Deal With Florida to Govern Itself and The Socially Distanced Protester: Collective action under lockdown
• Political Animal (Washington Monthly)
• Politico Playbook (Mike Allen’s political tip sheet)
• Pollster (Huffpost tracks thousands of public polls to give you the latest data on elections, political opinions and more)
• The Polycrisis (Phenomenal World, edited by Tim Sahay and Kate Mackenzie) A newsletter and a series of essays and panels exploring intersecting crises with a particular emphasis on the political economy of climate change and the emerging shape of the “new nonalignment” in global North/South dynamics.
• Popular Information Judd Legum's newsletter about politics for people who give a damn. See Judd Legum Wants to Fix News With a Newsletter (Emily Dreyfuss, Wired, 7-12-18) "Excellent, consistently impactful accountability journalism."
• Post Secret, an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard.
• Prevail Greg Olear's column about politics, history, national security, foreign affairs, organized crime, dirty money, global corruption, the fight for democracy—and, on Sundays, poetry and literature.
• A Progressive on the Prairie (about books, reading and other things that bring nuance to life)
• ProPublica (journalism in the public interest) Investigative journalism par excellence. Check out stories on several topics: Civil rights, criminal justice,debt, education, environment, health care, immigration, labor, military, politics, regulation, racial justice, sex and gender, technology, and Trump. See also its newsletter Not Shutting Up (an occasional newsletter).
• The Public Domain Review showcases curious and compelling out-of-copyright works available online from the history of art, literature, and ideas.
• Public Seminar (New School) Informing debate about the pressing issues of our times and creating a global intellectual commons.
• Publishers Weekly news
• Publishing Talk (London)
• Quartz Daily Brief (Atlantic Media's daily business newsletter)
• Quillette A thoughtful, sometimes provocative newsletter (or podcast
• Raw Story, progressive news site with stories the mainstream media often ignores
• Regret the Error (Poynter reports on media errors and corrections)
• Richard Nash. See also Richard Nash on the Democratization of Publishing
• Robert Reich (author of The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It) Exposing where power lies — and how it's used and abused. Examples:
---The Democrats' disease The Roots of Trumpism (Part 3)
---Why Republicans are obsessed with pedophilia, gender identity, gay people, and abortion From Ron DeSantis to Josh Hawley to Greg Abbott, they're fixated on sex. Here's why. Worth subscribing for the Caption Contest alone, but you get his analysis of politics, too.
• Robinhood Snacks (your daily 3-minute dose of financial news)
• Royal Society of Literature blog
• Rude Pundit (politics and sometimes culture from a rude liberal)
• Ruffian (Ian Leslie's newsletter) Fish out of water stupidity: "The bankers who screwed up in the 2008 crash thought they were in the domain of risk when in reality they were in the domain of uncertainty. Regulators who were flat-footed during during the pandemic (more of a problem for the US than the UK) failed to clock that they were now in the domain of crisis management."
• The Rumpus (reviews of books, movies, and music, plus short interviews and personal essays)
• The Scholarly Kitchen (what's hot and cooking in scholarly publishing, Society for Scholarly Publishing)
• Science Blogs (a chatty and thoughtful community of bloggers)
• Science Daily (digests of the latest research news on health+medicine, mind+brain, plants+animals, earth+climate, space+time, matter+energy, computers+math)
• SciShortform (Medium, Best Shortform Science Writing, posted online quarterly)
• Seth Godin (riffs on marketing, respect, and the ways ideas spread)
• 7 Takeaways (Leo Notenboom's eclectic blog). Archive here. See When In Doubt, Love – 7 Takeaways No. 158 and his reading list.
• Shelf Awareness. Shelf Awareness for Readers appears Tuesdays and Fridays and helps readers discover the 25 best books of the week, as chosen by booksellers, librarians and other industry experts; news about books and authors, author interviews and more. Shelf Awareness Pro, published since 2005, gives booksellers, librarians, and people throughout the book industry the information they need to sell and lend books. Appears every business day.
• The Shit No One Tells You About Writing A podcast for "emerging writers."
• Simon Owens's Tech and Media Newsletter. Love this one. See sample columns here and here. Example: Did theSkimm try to expand too quickly? 5-11-2020) on whether The Skimm tried to expand too quickly—with too much VC money too early as the culprit (H/T Jane Friedman)
• The 1619 Project (an important New York Times series. Marking the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery, it aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are)
• Slashdot (News for nerds. Stuff that matters)
• Slate blogs
• Snarky Senior Erica Manfred's newsletter about growing old ungracefully. Sample: Keep your voice down. It's driving me nuts.
• So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast (FIRE aka The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) Defending the rights of students and faculty at America’s colleges and universities.
• Statistics blogs
• STAT @statnews (a newsletter reporting from the front lines of health and medicine) You can also sign up for sign up for Morning Rounds, a daily dose of news in health and medicine.
• StoryFix (storycraft for serious writers)
• The Straight Dope (Cecil Adams) Fighting ignorance since 1973. (It's taking longer than we thought.)
• Sunday Business Sermons (video, but you can just listen: Jane Friedman and occasional guests) Also links to Business Clinics. Listen to practical advice about many aspects of book publishing, including self-publishing.
• Sustainable Gardening (Susan Harris, with good links on gardening)
• Systematic Hatreds (Paul Musgrave) A personal view of international relations and political science: research, teaching, and current events
• Talking Points Memo (TPM, news and commentary on political events from political left, by Joshua Micah Marshall, and TPM Muckraker.
• Tech Crunch
• The Technium (Kevin Kelly, who also writes Cool Tools and New Rules for the New Economy (radical strategies for the new economy)
• TED: Ideas Worth Spreading (Technology, Entertainment, Design) -- interactive website with videos of talks, thoughts, performances of the world's thinkers and doers who gather at the invitation-only TED conference to find inspiration)
• Terrible Minds (novelist Chuck Wendig's lively blog with useful tips for fiction writers)
• There Are No Rules (Editors of Writer's Digest blog)
• Time Goes By (what it's really like to get older), including the TGB blog The Elder Storytelling Place
• Times Literary Supplement: A Don's Life (Mary Beard's blog)
• TomDispatch.com (fine political analysis by Tom Engelhardt). Check out his blogroll for more good sites.
• Top 99 Creative Writing Blogs (Best Colleges Online)
• The Top 99 Freelancer Blogs (Bootstrapper)
• The Transatlantic Observer (analysis, commentary and reporting on US and European foreign policy)
• A Traveler's Library (about literature and travel)
• **Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines
• The Uptake (strengthen your local journalists with citizen journalism)
• Unsilent Generation (James Ridgeway's site for pissed-off progressive old folks and future old folks...because we're not dead yet!)
• Urban Dictionary
• U.S. Intellectual History blog (Society for U.S. Intellectual History, S-USIH)
• UTNE Reader blogs
• The Verge (Vox, covers the intersection of technology, science, art, and culture)
• VideoSift (selected videos on YouTube)
• The Volokh Conspiracy Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent. On the Reason website: "Free minds and free markets"
• Vox newsletters Solid variety.
• VSL (Very Short List) (cultural gems from a different curator every day)
• Washington Post blogs and columns (community)
• The Weekly Dish (Andrew Sullivan's newsletter, website, and podcast, on Substack) See Andrew Sullivan On His Early Influences (Part One) and Part Two.
• Weekly Filet Every Friday, get David Bauer's carefully curated set of the best links from around the web.
• The Weekly Sift Doug Muder's "political blog for people who don’t have time for political blogs,” Making sense of the news one week at a time (Mondays)
• What Do We Do Now That We're Here (Rosie Spinks). See, for example, The Friendship Problem (Why friendships have started to feel strikingly similar to admin) “What we actually need most — is each other”
• The Why? Files (the science behind the news)
• WikiLeaks, a multi-jurisdictional public service designed to protect whistleblowers, journalists and activists who have sensitive materials to communicate.
• Wine Library TV (videos, changing the wine world)
• Wizbang (pro-Republican blog)
• Women in Crime Ink. A crew of women (journalists, true-crime authors, novelists, lawyers, investigators) (and guest males?) explore crime, the justice system, and related topics.
• World Literature Today blog
• The Wrap (covers the entertainment and media news industry)
• The Write Life (getting started as a writer)
• Write-Minded Podcast Brooke Warner of She Writes and Grant Faulkner of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) host theme-focused episodes, each featuring an interview with a writer, author, or publishing industry professional--for writers craving a blend of inspiration and real talk about the ups and downs of the writing life.
• The Write Practice Kick-start your writing practice with writing prompts, etc.
• Writer Everlasting (Ramona Grigg, on many angles of writing)
• WSJ Blogs (real-time news and analysis from the Journal). Includes WSJ's Health Blog.
• Your Local Epidemiologist (Katelyn Jetelina) See How Katelyn Jetelina turned a side hustle into a safety net Her advice on growing her Substack from scratch to a subscriber base in the hundreds of thousands. See also (not KJ's): Top 50 Substack Newsletters (ranked by how many subscribers they have)
• YouTube
SEE ALSO (elsewhere on this website)
• Addictive and wonderful TV and cable shows
• All the top (good and intelligent) radio talk shows and podcasts
• Blog roll
• Blogs, news, essays, shortform writing, and podcasts about medicine, health, and science
• Good book and lit blogs and online magazines
• Great podcasts
• Index of blog posts on Writers and Editors website
• Literary magazines and journals
•
• Where journalists get their medical news and information
TOP READING, VIEWING, LISTENING
(roundup of links to "best" and "top" lists)
• All the top (good, intelligent) radio talk shows and podcasts (McNees links)
• Addictive and wonderful TV and cable shows
• Great podcasts to listen to while your hands and eyes are doing something else (McNees links)
• Podcasts about health, health care, medicine and medical science (McNees links to best podcasts)
• A+ blog and newsletter roll (Writers and Editors)
• Top 50 Substack Newsletters (reletter)
• 25 Newsletters and Tools to Discover Shareable Content (Kevan Lee @Buffer)
• 31 Bookish, Brainy, Beautiful Blogs for Readers (Tracy O'Neill, NY Public Library)
• 17 Unique Places to Find Great Content to Share (Kevan Lee @Buffer)
• 14 Newsletters You’ll Want in Your Inbox (Anum Hussain @Buffer)
• Great search links (Writers and Editors)
And on a sister site, Comfortdying.com:
• Blogs, columns, and news sites about health, healthcare, and medicine
• Podcasts about health, health care, and medical science
• Best adult books on death, dying, loss, and grief
• Books to help someone with a sudden or major loss
• Children's picture books about death and loss
• Movies about aging
• Movies about death and dying, loss and grief
• Fiction about aging, illness, and dementia
• Recommended reading lists on comfortdying.com website
• Stories of courage, resilience, and other coping attitudes
• Just plain interesting! Life in these crazy times.
ABOUT BLOGS AND BLOGGING
• Why I Blog (Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic, Nov. 2008) "Its truths are provisional, and its ethos collective and messy. Yet the interaction it enables between writer and reader is unprecedented, visceral, and sometimes brutal. And make no mistake: it heralds a golden era for journalism."
• How to Start Blogging: A Definitive Guide for Authors (Jane Friedman, March 31, 2022) Here she defines “blogging” as publishing material to a site that you own and control—usually your author website. If you treat the practice seriously, all the content that you generate for your blog can have another life, in another format or within another publication. Consistency (in frequency and in subject matter) is critical for effective blogging. "Only about 10% of your readers (or even fewer) will make themselves known to you or engage with you on your blog, so it takes a while before you reach a tipping point, where there’s a concrete indication of growing activity or interest." Lots of practical advice here (and generally from this author).
• How To Start a Blog – Beginner’s Guide (Jessica Knapp, Blogging Basics 101)
• Daily Blog Tips
• FTC to go after blogger freebies (Caroline McCarthy, C/Net, 6-22-09) Federal Trade Commission plans to start keeping tabs both on bloggers accepting products for free and on the companies giving them away, the AP reports.
*****FTC publishes guidelines governing endorsements, testimonials: Changes affect testimonial advertisements, bloggers, celebrity endorsements. For example: "the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service." Be aware of "the long standing principle that 'material connections'(sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed." Read those guidelines!
• Why So Many Blogs and Newsletters Aren’t Worth the Writer’s Effort (Jane Friedman, 4-14-22) Blogs tend to fail when the writing is overly informational and without voice. Blogs and newsletters thrive on you creating a connection with the reader. "Blog content, despite being free, should offer some of your most iconic and impressive material to be noticed and competitive...[E]ach piece of writing you take time to write and publish creates both an impression and an opportunity. When you add up those impressions over time, you become known for something. You want to be intentional in what you’re getting known for."
• How to Blog ( Farhad Manjoo, Slate, 12-08) Advice from Arianna Huffington, Om Malik, and more of the Web's best pundits.
• Why 3000+ Word Blog Posts Get More Traffic (Neil Patel) Why you need to create evergreen long-form content and how to produce it.
• Maintaining a Long-Term Blog (Heidi Swanson, 101 Cookbooks, a natural foods recipe journal, 11-6-14)
• Claiming Your Own Little Corner of the Web ( J. D. Biersdorfer,NY Times, 6-16-17)
• Marketing My First Viral Video: What I Learned (SEOSocial, 3-3-16)
• 10 Wildly-Successful Blogs That Earn Outlandish Incomes (R.L. Adams, Forbes, 3-2-17)
• Writing an Article vs. Writing a Blog Post: What’s the Difference? (Carol Tice, Make a Living Writing, 1-11-15). Here's one difference: AOL Realizes Bloggers Will Work For Free; Stops Paying Them (Erick Schonfeld, TechCrunch, 7-28-08).
• Blogging Versus Email Newsletter: Which Is Better for Writers? (Jane Friedman, 4-17-21) Great blog content can attract new and sometimes very large readerships, but most of us don’t avidly follow blogs these days. "You have to learn how to write good headlines for your blog posts, write and structure them for a good online reading experience, and house the posts on a decent author website or within an environment that leads to further action (like a newsletter sign-up or a social media follow).... Blogging typically requires social media support." And "To gain traction with a blog, you have to be fairly disciplined about the subjects you’ll cover and your distinctive angle on those subjects. Changing it up all the time is not a good idea."
• As Blogs and Citizen Journalism Grow, Where’s the News? (Rick Edmonds, Poynter, 10-31-05) The jury is way out on what business models, if any, work for blogs and citizen journalism. The noise-to-signal ratio in the new media forms remains alarmingly high. And it's time to stop this silly stuff about replacing big media.
• Legal Guide for Bloggers (Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF). And here's an index to all the questions in the Bloggers' Legal Guide.
• Blog reviews (ServiceScape's reviews of literary blogs)
• 16 Top Tips from Blogging Experts for Beginners (Belle Beth Cooper, Buffer, 7-30-13). The 16 commandments.
• 25 Blogging Tips for Newbies and Veterans (Jeff Goins)
• Blogging Toolbox (Mashable)
• The Blogging Revolution (Andrew Sullivan, Wired, 5-1-02) Weblogs Are to Words What Napster Was to Music. (Does that date it?)
• FTC's Endorsement Guides: What People Are Asking (for example, How Should I Disclose That I Was Given Something for My Endorsement? What About Affiliate or Network Marketing? Do I Have to Disclose If....?)
• Blogs to Riches: The Haves and HaveNots of the Blogging Boom (Clive Th0mpson, New York Magazine, 2012)
• Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes (Jakob Nielsen, 10-17-05) Blogs are often too internally focused and ignore key usability issues, making it hard for new readers to understand the site and trust the author.
• Blogs, explained by Common Craft
• A Beginner's Guide to Apps (Lifewire) This is thrown in for extra credit. An app is an "application" -- "a piece of software that can run through a web browser or even offline on your computer, phone, tablet or any other electronic device. Apps may or may not have a connection to the internet. The app is a modern take on the word software or application. This is why you probably only hear it in reference to a mobile app or a small piece of software that's running on a website. It's typically used to describe anything that isn't a full-fledged software program. And so on.
• That Solo Travel Blogger? She Just Wants a Vacation (Jessica Teich, Travel, NY Times, 5-3-17)
ABOUT BLOGS AND BLOGGING
• How to Blog ( Farhad Manjoo, Slate, 12-08) Advice from Arianna Huffington, Om Malik, and more of the Web's best pundits.
• Why 3000+ Word Blog Posts Get More Traffic (Neil Patel) Why you need to create evergreen long-form content and how to produce it.
• Maintaining a Long-Term Blog (Heidi Swanson, 101 Cookbooks, a natural foods recipe journal, 11-6-14)
• Claiming Your Own Little Corner of the Web ( J. D. Biersdorfer,NY Times, 6-16-17)
• Marketing My First Viral Video: What I Learned (SEOSocial, 3-3-16)
• How To Start a Blog – Beginner’s Guide for 2017 (Jessica Knapp, Blogging Basics 101, 5-10-17)
• Daily Blog Tips
• Blogs to Riches: The Haves and HaveNots of the Blogging Boom (Clive Th0mpson, New York Magazine, 2012)
• Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes (Jakob Nielsen, 10-17-05) Blogs are often too internally focused and ignore key usability issues, making it hard for new readers to understand the site and trust the author.
• Blogs, explained by Common Craft
• A Beginner's Guide to Apps (Lifewire) This is thrown in for extra credit. An app is an "application" -- "a piece of software that can run through a web browser or even offline on your computer, phone, tablet or any other electronic device. Apps may or may not have a connection to the internet. The app is a modern take on the word software or application. This is why you probably only hear it in reference to a mobile app or a small piece of software that's running on a website. It's typically used to describe anything that isn't a full-fledged software program. And so on.
• That Solo Travel Blogger? She Just Wants a Vacation (Jessica Teich, Travel, NY Times, 5-3-17)
Blog posts on Writers and Editors website
Indexed (by category)
Addictive TV and cable shows (plus video)
All-star pages
Amazon, Google, and other dominating forces on the Internet
Archiving and history
Book publishing
Book, video, and multimedia production
Collaboration and ghostwriting
Copyright and open access
Diversity and inclusion
Ebook publishing
Editors and editing
Freelancing and independent contracting
Index of blog posts
Journalism and journalists
Marketing and social networking
Memoirs, personal histories, and life story writing
Miscellaneous blog posts
Money matters
Rights, contracts, fair deals, insurance, and legal problems
Self-publishing and print-on-demand (POD)
Storytelling and narrative
The writing life
Tools for writers, editors, and readers
Truth, accuracy, and fact-checking
Videos or art featuring Pat McNees
Virtual events and Zoom
DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION
• An anti-racism reading and resource list
• Celebrating diversity in children's books
EDITORS AND EDITING
• Kinds of editors and levels of edit
• Deciding what level of editing to assign to a piece
• Editing checklists
• Editing: a craft or a business?
• When and whether to hire an editor or book doctor
• Finding an editor
• Online Tutorials on Proofing and Copy Editing (3-2-13)
• All you need to know about indexes and indexing (5-12-12)
• Even Jane Austen needed an editor
TRUTH, ACCURACY, AND FACT-CHECKING
• The Lifespan of a Fact (truth, fact-checking, and art)
• 30+ sites for fact-checking political debates and other occasions for lies, rumors, hoaxes, misinformation, and inaccuracy
• Fact-checking the Democrats and the Republicans (8-30-12)
• Retracting Mike Daisey (on fabricated stories, 3-27-12)
On Pat’s website:
• How to spot and identify fake news
• Fake news and media literacy (a round-up of articles on the subject--including how to make readers savvier)
• Key fact-checking sites
• Where to check out hoaxes, urban legends, email scams, and chain letters
COLLABORATION AND GHOSTWRITING
• The Art and Economics of Ghostwriting Books
• Debating the ethics of medical ghostwriting (10-19-10)
MEMOIRS, PERSONAL HISTORIES, AND LIFE STORY WRITING
• A short history of the Association of Personal Historians
• Twenty-one frequently asked questions about personal histories and personal historians
• Why I love teaching Guided Autobiography (by Lisa Smith-Youngs)
• Writing workshops as group therapy
• Voice in memoir. See also Voice, persona, and point of view in memoir
• How reliable are our memories? How close to the truth?
• Memoir, biography, and personal histories (how-to resources)
• Collaborating on memoirs (J.R. Moehringer and Andre Agassi)
• Arlene Friedman Shepherd: The Life She Loved (In memoriam, 2012)
• A memoir writer's dream come true
• Whose Truth? The ethics of memoir writing
• Photos and memoir writing
• Personal history videos (video by Peter Savigny of his mother, Remembering Renee)
• Ben Patton on interviewing military veterans (video, interviewed by RJ McHatton)
• Memoirs of war and conflict: A reading list
• Memoirs of coping with chronic, rare, or invisible diseases, including mental health problems
• Personal historians love their work
• Is it still a great time to become a personal historian?
• Coming-of-age memoirs make great gifts
• Mark Twain on writing autobiography
• Soundtrack of your life (engaging students with music, to write about a pivotal moment in their life)
ARCHIVING AND HISTORY
• Preserving original documents (by archivist Taylor Whitney)
• Scanning many letters to get a searchable digital archive (Joella Werlin and Elisabeth Pozzi-Thanner, 7-24-17)
• A Historian's Code (by Richard W. Stewart)
• History in and for a digital age
RIGHTS, CONTRACTS, INSURANCE, LEGAL PROBLEMS, AND FAIR DEALS
• The Authors Guild Fair Contract Initiative (the main issues in book contracts, once over lightly)
• Authors Guild vs. Authors Alliance (Writing for a living vs. the broadest possible sharing of one's work)
• Authors' wills, trusts, and estates
• Estate planning: Your literary Estate)
• RIGHTS 101: What Writers Should Know About All-Rights and Work-Made-For-Hire Contracts (2003 position paper from ASJA, posted 10-2012)
• How to Deal with Warranty and Indemnification Clauses (8-13-12)
• Author alert: Reclaim rights on books pubbed 1978 and after (1-10-12)
• The interviewee's right to "edit" a transcript or story
• Who owns an interview? Who controls the right to use it?
• "How Can Creators Get a Fair Deal in the Digital World?" (6-10-10)
• Bad Behavior: Rights bandits on the Wild Web
• Consent the best defense against invasion of privacy lawsuits
• New iBook software's greedy grab for exclusive rights (2-1-12, thanks to Robin Rowlands)
• Media perils and liability insurance 101
• Health insurance, freelancers, and the Affordable Care Act (8-22-13, so not up-to-date but lists resources)
COPYRIGHT and OPEN ACCESS
• How long does copyright last?
• Revolution in academia: Copyright and open access
• The Hubbub About Sci-Hub: Who's the real pirate?
• Righthaven, the "copyright troll"
JOURNALISTS AND JOURNALISM
•Covering the Covid-19 pandemic: Resources for journalists
• Where journalists get their medical news (an important search and reading list)
• Will journalism survive? In what form?
• Fake news and media literacy
• Reporting on controversial scientific and medical topics
• Should political reporters be more than stenographers? (1-15-12)
STORYTELLING AND NARRATIVE
• Storytelling (the secrets of professional storytellers)
• How to shape a book (on story structure)
• The danger of a single story (video, Chimamanda Adichie's Ted Talk)
• Narrative Medicine and Medical Narrative (12-2-11)
BOOK PUBLISHING
• Margaret Atwood on The Publishing Pie (3-5-11 and still delightful and right on)
• The truth about book sales and authors' income
• Book Publishing: After the blockbuster, the niche
• Agents as publishers--a new conflict of interest (5-17-11)
• Mike Shatzkin on bookselling's past, present, and future (6-7-11)
• Authors' options in the changing book publishing game
SELF PUBLISHING AND PRINT-ON-DEMAND (POD)
• Who gets the ISBN for your self-published book and why?
• Tom Benjey's run with print-on-demand self-publishing (by Tom Benjey, 2-17-12)
• CreateSpace, Lightning Source, and Lulu: One self-publisher's experience (by Tom Benjey)
• Does the world want a flood of crummy self-published books?
• The frontier world of self-published e-books (6-6-11)
• Self-publishing trailblazer Amanda Hocking shifts gears (3-30-11)
• Tutorials from the Self-Publishing Trenches (4-11-11)
• Essentials of self-publishing
EBOOK PUBLISHING
• Readers: you can't actually buy an ebook
• How to price ebooks (as of 2013)
• Nathan Bransford explains the e-book price wars (3-11-11)
• Will the e-book revolution have the same effect the paperback revolution did? (report on Mike Shatzkin's post, 3-14-11)
• Librarians feel gobsmacked by HarperCollins restriction on e-book loans (3-15-11)
• EBook basics for authors (part 1: formatting) (report from May 2011, updated 2013)
• EBook basics for authors (part 2: DRM, or copy protection) (5-13-11)
• eBook basics for authors (part 3, trends and questions) (5-13-11)
• Amazon, E-books, and the Future of Publishing (updated 11-2012)
• How to price ebooks (as of 2013)
• What's up with publishers not selling ebooks to libraries? (3-19-12)
• Amazon, E-books, and the Future of Publishing (updated 11-2012)
BOOK, VIDEO, and MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTION
• Audio-recording equipment, software, tools and tutorials (1-3-12)
• Scanning many letters to get a searchable digital archive (Joella Werlin and Elisabeth Pozzi-Thanner, 7-24-17)
• Guides to scanning, digitizing, and editing for video and multimedia (6-21-11)
• Scanning photos: what resolution is best?
• Working with Offset Printers (by designer Robin Brooks)
• Editing checklists
• Metadata, explained, with Tweeted examples
GOOD VIDEO, TV, CABLE, and PODCASTS
• ****Addictive and wonderful TV and cable shows (for when you're looking for something good to watch)
• Great podcasts to listen to as you exercise, drive, iron, file, cook, clean, ride or walk
• A Hairstyle of My Own (Bill Erwin's funny video about Pat McNees's hair history)
• Seniors Today interview about personal histories (video: Austin Heyman interviews Debbie Brodsky and Pat McNees)
• Personal history videos (video by Peter Savigny of his mother, Remembering Renee)
• Bill Wurtz's fabulous speedy history of Japan (video)
• Grandfather's journal (video)
• Gratitude (video, Louie Schwartzberg's inspirational TED talk)
VIDEOS FEATURING PAT
• A Hairstyle of My Own (Bill Erwin's funny video about Pat McNees's hair history)
• Seniors Today interview about personal histories (video: Austin Heyman interviews Debbie Brodsky and Pat McNees)
THE WRITING LIFE
• Ten reasons why it's better to be a docent than a writer (Kathryn Lance's delightful piece)
• The care and treatment of authors
MONEY MATTERS
• Pay the Writer (video, Harlan Ellison's classic rant)
• Authors' wills, trusts, and estates
• Estate planning: Your literary Estate)
• How to set your prices as a freelancer or consultant (4-1-12)
• Unpaid internships under fire
• Who wins and loses from DoJ's suit against Big Publishers and Apple? (5-5-12)
• The Panama Papers: Exposing the rogue offshore money maze (Politicians, Criminals, and the Rogue Industry That Hides Their Cash)
MARKETING AND SOCIAL NETWORKING
• How to do a virtual book launch (especially during the pandemic)
• Your elevator speech
• Social networking for book readers
• Library Thing, GoodReads, Shelfari -- and other social networking for bookworms
• Great covers sell books, but what makes for a great cover?
• Do blurbs help sell books?
• Can negative book reviews help sales? (3-24-11)
• Author websites that pull you--in different ways
• New fellowship in Jewish fiction writing and scholarship (Dec. 2012)
• PEN Literary Awards offer generous, prestigious honors (Jan. 2013)
FREELANCING AND INDEPENDENT CONTRACTING
• Independent writers object to laws that reclassify freelance writers as employees (ASJA)
• Freelancers Suffer Unintended Consequences of Independent Contractor Law (6-30-10)
• Should I work for free?
TOOLS FOR WRITERS, EDITORS, AND READERS
• Tools for Writers and Editors
• Evernote (Productivity Tools for Writers and Editors)
• What's an iPad good for? (by David Dantzler, 4-23-12)
• Reading devices and back pain
AMAZON, GOOGLE, AND OTHER DOMINATING FORCES ON THE INTERNET
• Amazon vs Book Publishers (Do Writers Win or Lose?)
• Amazon.com (Gorilla) and the Future of Book Publishing (part 1) (2-1-12)
• Amazon.com and the Future of Book Publishing (part 2)
• Social media superpowers under the microscope (Manipulation, copyright violation, clickbait, blockchains, and other issues with the Internet monopolies: Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, YouTube, and Twitter)
• Amazon, E-books, and the Future of Publishing (updated 11-2012)
• Settlement on Google book search lawsuit
MISCELLANEOUS BLOG POSTS
• Artificial intelligence (AI)--what the heck is it? What problems does it bring?
• Ever wondered about those TED talks and conferences?
• Hans Rosling, animating global health data
• 20 great resources for aspiring writers of children's books (12-29-11)
• Connecting the dots: Steve Jobs' wisdom
• Net Neutrality: What is it and where do things stand? (a roundup of links to important explanations, arguments)
• Channeling rage to produce change (quoting Terry Tempest Williams)
VIRTUAL EVENTS AND ZOOM
• How to do a virtual book launch
• How to do Zoom events
ABOUT BLOGS AND BLOGGING
Chris Garrett's blog advice may be helpful, including these entries: How to Build a Useful Site, How to Get More Value from Your Site, How to Get the Right Attention, and a blog critique.
Is BlogHer Still Relevant? (Hannah Seligson, Forbes.com, 2-19-10). The premier women's blog platform was celebrating its fifth year, but were readers and advertisers still interested? BlogHer (Life well said) has posted video from the 10 general sessions of its BlogHer 2010 conference
Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters by Scott Rosenberg.