What's Next for the Newsletter After Losing My Job
Yesterday, BuzzFeed laid off 35% of its workforce—and, reader, it may shock you to learn that I was very much a part of that 35%. BuzzFeed (Jesus Christ, why am I still capitalizing the "F" if I don't work there anymore?) was, across the nearly two-decade career I've had in digital media, the absolute strangest job I've had in several ways; it was also, in a stroke of unbelievable improbability, the longest job I've ever had.
I began as a permalance night writer churning out aggregated content in the depths of COVID circa fall 2020 and, as these things often happen to me, ended up managing varying numbers of young people while continuing to churn out aggregated content across the following five-and-a-half years. It's likely that I'll write about my often-bewildering experience at BuzzFeed at some point—perhaps on this very newsletter, maybe somewhere else, wherever the wind will take me, really—but it won't be any time soon, largely for the reason that I still have severance payments to be awarded and I'm not interested in fucking up the money line.
What I will say is that I worked with plenty of lovely and decent people, and that my producing absolutely nothing of note at BuzzFeed was a huge boon to this newsletter itself. After years of arguing over coverage, awaiting edits, and elbowing for substantial work at various publications of repute, there was a certain freedom to having a job that quite literally did not matter to myself or any of my peers—and it was that freedom that has allowed me to build this newsletter into what it is today, effectively making BuzzFeed a very unintentional patron of DIY publishing.
That being said, let's talk turkey when it comes to this very here publication. I'll have a lot more time to pour into doing things with this newsletter that a full-time job producing aggregated content prevented me from doing—more writing about film and TV, more personal observations on things taking place around me, more critical writing in general—and I will absolutely be seizing the opportunity to further expand this newsletter into an operation that publishes even more than it already does. I'm very excited about this, and if I'm totally honest, I've been excited about it since I started getting the "I'm losing this job soon" feeling in my bones nine months or so ago.
As of now, a lot of my critical writing exists via an email-only paywall to paid subscribers—and now that this newsletter is going to be my only full-time job for a while, those paid subscribers are more vital to the future of this publication than ever before. Today is also my birthday (haha), so in honor of my turning 39 I am running a month-long subscription sale, 39% off the first six months of a monthly subscription or a year of the annual subscription. You can grab the monthly sale ($1.83/month) here, and the annual sale ($18.30) here. It's a great deal, I charge way less than a lot of newsletters, and you get way more for your money as a result. Most importantly, you keep this newsletter alive—which, if you're reading this to begin with, I assume you have somewhat of an interest in doing so.
For the next month (until August 28 or so), all paywalled content is also going to be free, and here's why: I'm going to be pushing this sale pretty aggressively, and the only way I can give people an idea of what they're paying for is to give them a taste. This will include new things I plan to do with the newsletter that will inevitably be paywalled in the future. I want to make the paid tier a big tent here, and I sincerely hope that as many readers as possible will take the opportunity to join in.
Lastly! If you've wanted to be part of the paid tier but can't afford it for any reason, email me at larry.fitzmaurice@gmail.com and we can work out a free trial of sorts. I enjoy sharing the paid content with as many people as possible, but times are perpetually tough in this world, and I definitely want to extend opportunities to people as much as possible as well.
OK, that's about it on this subject for a while. I'm most likely taking the rest of the week off (can you blame me, lol) and about to head out to form a sufficiently snobbish opinion on The Odyssey, but regular publishing will definitely resume next week. (I'll probably publish something this week too because I am addicted to working and was not, as the kids say, born to dilly-dally.) Until then!