This edition of Deez Links is brought to you by Garbage Day, the award-winning internet culture newsletter written by Ryan Broderick. Ryan is throwing a big election event—called “America, The Final Season”—on October 23 at the Bell House in Brooklyn. Get tickets here!

Tina on Substack!

Well well well well well, if it isn’t Madam Glossy herself Tina Brown getting on Substack (and without even a fat advance apparently!). Shrewdly, Brown doesn’t seem to be promising anything more than bloggy diaristic “notebook form” fun in her newsletter, Fresh Hell; I imagine she understands better than most that the highest valued currency in media right now is in voicy, authoritative takes (or like, affiliate links). 

Part of me interprets Brown’s newsletter move as a serious indictment on the state of legacy media — is there truly no publication with the resources or reach to want to give Tina a good, rollicking column? From a book marketing angle, Brown surely doesn’t need a Substack to prime an audience for that next memoir. 

So is it possible that Fresh Hell (though I think she should have called it TinaLetter) really is what she says: a fun outlet that’s fulfilling that veteran poster’s urge in lieu of any other low-stakes arena like Twitter anymore. But jeez, those subscriptions have got to feel like pocket change though for someone who embodied peak Condé excess. Imagine explaining Stripe fees to Tina Brown…

(Ex-)Pitchfork on Beehiiv!

The layoff-to-newsletter cooperative pipeline is going strong: five ex-Pitchfork staffers are banding together and starting Hearing Things, which has a sick almost retro 2010s-feeling website (laudatory) and of course, a newsletter element.

Hearing Things is not entirely paywalled, but the lowest paid tier is $7 or $70 a year, which is practically a steal in the era of $50 individual newsletters. I’ve been thinking about the new price point of media in the Substack/newsletter age, where the $50 annual is the new norm. Does that feel right? The publishing industry has essentially raised the typical hardcover book price point to be around $27; surely a year’s worth of content from one or more writers you like makes sense in comparison. 

But it does call into question the advertiser-driven, circulation-forward model that traditional magazines still rely on. Like doesn’t it feel batshit from the consumer side in comparison that in this day and age you can get like, Vanity Fair at $8 for the ENTIRE YEAR? Magazine math, man. 

Hell Gate making $$ (whilst on Substack)!

Did you see that the local NY news co-op Hell Gate (which uses Substack but also has a nice site) turned two and stands to make about half a million dollars in the coming year from paid subscriptions alone—enough to pay its 7-person staff annual salaries of $60,000…

…And a nice little treatment in WaPo. This is not a shady thing, but the photos in that combined with the photos in the NYT writeup of Hearing Things are very funny to me……it brings to mind the days when you’d see photos of like BuzzFeed and Gawker offices splashed all over like the NYT and you would start to see how photographers were running out of ways to make working on MacBooks in a colorful fUnKY office look aspirational. Anyway, i said NO SHADE, the lead images for both staffs are both very nice and aesthetic in their respective ways, probably because they realized a regular office pic would be very boring.

Jane what are you doing on Substack??

The last thing I’ll say on this magazine/newsletter beat is…have you guys checked Jane Pratt’s Substack since it launched a few weeks ago? Casey Lewis asked me over lunch the other day whether I’d started reading it yet, and I was like oh yeah I signed up for the free version but she hasn’t sent anything out right? 

And then Casey was like, no no look at the Substack site, which we did, and realized it’s fully populated with like dozens and dozens of articles already—very old school website launch style. My heart kind of sunk. Jane you gotta be emailing these out to the freeloaders girl!! Lure them in!! No one is actually clicking around and exploring a new website anymore!! Blast em into the inbox!!!!

Yet through it all, GQ Is Somehow Still GQing

Is Gabriella Paiella the only big celeb profiler doing only celeb profiles and interviews anymore? It feels like that kind of prestigious remit is nearly impossible to find now unless you’re a NYT mag or New Yorker darling, exempted from the blog slog. (Like dude they are squeezing Emily Gould over at NY Mag for all their money’s worth with that advice column and a new book newsletter?? in addition to features writer???). 

Anyway, Gabriella had two viral-y interviews with actual A-List heartthrobs Harrison Ford and Paul Mescal this week; it’s interesting to me how she asked them both to address or at least acknowledge their respective online meme status, which is I guess how you feed the viral machine right back with a reflection of itself these days. Must suck for celebs though—not only do you have to pay attention to all that, but you have to think of something quippy to say that’ll ideally further your accidental cult internet status…

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Garbage Day, the award-winning internet culture newsletter written by Ryan Broderick, is throwing a big event for the election this month. It's called “America, The Final Season," and it's live at the Bell House in Brooklyn on October 23rd. Memes! Music! Laughs! Niche internet references! Trauma bonding over the last 10 years of American politics! It's got everything. There's also going to be a bunch of special guests, including writer Magdalene J Taylor, Semafor's Ben Smith, podcaster Akilah Hughes, and Morning Brew's Dan Toomey. 

You can get your tickets here!