Earlier this summer, Defector
turned itself over to a guest editor for the first time:
Brandy Jensen, former Gawker and current Thrillist Deputy Editor, commissioned and ran a series of essays on irrational attachments. This was one of my favorite weeks on the site
—not only because Brandy published a bunch of great
pieces from
writers who
weren’t already in our
rolodex, but also because it made me excited about Defector's future.
One of the best things about editing Defector is feeling like you're in conversation with readers and subscribers, other writers and publications, and the world at large. The quality and depth of that conversation improves as we're able to bring more voices onto the site.
Hiring new writers and
paying a lot of freelancers is one way to go about this; doing more guest editor weeks is another. I would like to make having a guest editor an annual tradition around here, but in order to do that we need the money to pay good editors for their time.
If all this feels like an annoying guy invading your inbox to drone on about the Importance Of Websites, let me pitch you from another angle: Subscribe to Defector today, and for at least one week every year you can enjoy a version of the site free from that annoying guy's influence.
As an added bonus, for another couple days, you can try a month for just $1.04. You should also check out the gift-linked versions of some of Brandy's guest-edited blogs below:
