The start of something new
Let's not bury the lede: this is no longer a weekly newsletter. Let me explain why
Welcome back to The Planet You Save May Be Your Own, a weekly newsletter on local & state climate action.
Last year I started lifting weights. After a lifetime of intermediate-level yoga skills, a half-dozen failed attempts at taking up running, and nearly throwing up the first (and last) time I tried barre, something about weightlifting clicked. I found myself wanting to go to the gym, understanding I would go, lift some heavy objects in highly specified ways and then leave. I felt better (if initially sore) after I did this.
One of the things I really appreciate about weightlifting is that success is not subjective. Sure, form can be critiqued, but ultimately either you lift the target weight or you don't. Failing a lift is also not particularly emotional, at least not for me yet. You’re supposed to fail occasionally.
This is refreshing to a writer, a job that's inherently subjective and involves a constantly shifting landscape of what constitutes external and internal success. When your job is to sit at a computer and transmute experience, talent, time and reporting into something publishable and interesting to a specific audience, there are so many ways to see failure in your output, in your skills, even if you know some of it is uncontrollable and fickle.
You may have noticed (or not) there hasn’t been an edition of the newsletter for the past few weeks. And there will not be regular editions for the indefinite future. This is not something I’ve decided suddenly, though I have been putting off writing about it.
At the beginning of the year, I made a deal with myself: if I didn’t see consistent indicators of growth or engagement, however small, by the end of March, I would put it on hiatus. Among other things in my freelance life, I offer newsletter consulting services, and I basically sat myself down for one of my own audits. I looked at how much time and effort I was spending on the newsletter, compared with these helpful, if imperfect, metrics of newsletter health. But I also tried to identify the intangible benefits I wanted to get out of writing it: story ideas? Experience about writing different subjects? Reader feedback? Taken as a whole, it wasn't adding up anymore.
Even if I didn't see those metrics improved, I might have continued on, if I felt I was truly bringing something valuable to readers or myself. Valuable is a such loaded word. It’s money; it’s also not. Valuable has come to mean different things to me as a freelancer. Is it valuable to spend my time doing project A instead of project B? Is it valuable for newsletter readers to curate links or should I really do original reporting? If I’m asking people to pay for my work, how often is valuable enough to publish?
I think often of the newsletter Culture Study by Anne Helen Petersen, which I almost always read. It's meant for a general audience, but is always in-depth, cutting across different subjects under the banner of “understanding the culture that surrounds us”. It’s also, from the outside, quite successful. Why couldn’t I do that for climate? Petersen’s built-in audience from Buzzfeed days and publishing books helped, but I don’t think that's the whole story.
This past week I went to the Society of Environmental Journalists conference, where I had two rare experiences: one, I met many people who were knowledgeable and deeply interested in the topics I'm interested in, and two, people recognized me by reputation. “Oh you wrote the Natural Allies story!” “Are you the Taylor Brown published in Grist?” As lovely as that was for an ego boost, I also felt a creeping fear that the only people who really enjoyed my stories were other journalists.
The newsletter consultant version of me would also tell you the need to understand who your audience is, who you are speaking to and what are their specific concerns. I don’t think I ever deeply understood who this newsletter was for, beyond myself, and that made it hard to decide what to write about.
I have heard good feedback occasionally from readers, in person and in email, but many weeks I stared down my planning document with dread rather than excitement: What am I going to write this week that’s good enough? What are my readers actually interested in? Am I promoting editions enough on social media?
TPYS is not going away entirely: I reserve the right to email you about stories I’m publishing (there's one coming fairly soon) or write about something that strikes me that I think is relevant to the readership I’ve built here - it just won't be weekly.
I’m so, so, deeply grateful for those who have supported the newsletter : both paid members and anyone who ever shared a newsletter edition — including one reader who sent me a hand-made quilt that now sits on my couch. The archive of all editions is going nowhere, and I encourage you to share anything that struck you with friends, family or the group chat. I've already ended paid members' subscriptions, and you should not be charged again.
Sometimes knowledge is knowing when to start something new, and sometimes it's knowing when to end something. I hope this is both.
because I can't help myself, here's a few of those local climate story links:
- ‘Green burials’ catch on in Michigan. Cemetery controversy follows
- Electric school buses help tribes bridge the energy transition
- The overlooked officials who have say over Georgia Power's policies and prices
- Meet the Black woman leading Detroit’s clean energy charge
- Arizona GOP eyes ‘wild’ climate ballot measures
- The retirement community fighting against a new gas plant