# news: ideas about relevant newsletters.

i don't really follow news and newsletters. the stoic wisdom says "focus on things you can control". well, news is full of things i can't control. it contains mostly unactionable passages that makes me angry and depressed. it also make me distracted and i focus less on things i actually want to achieve.

i can imagine a relevant newsletter for me though. it would be very local: it would be made and involve people and places i interact with daily (e.g. my team and workplace, a sport club and its arena, a neighborhood and its street, a group of friends and their favorite pub). i'm imagining a monthly newsletter with topics like this:

• a short interview with a peer so that i get to know someone more;
• a short summary of a peer's work or hobby;
• a free form poll or two about some upcoming fun event, or some other change;
• one line summary of the past month or their current mood from each peer;
• any soapbox writing, tips and tricks written by a peer;
• summary of any relevant upcoming events and changes around the team;
• a selection of gossips and best quotes made by the peers;
• anonymous messages in case people want to whistleblow or point out uncool stuff without their name.

not all of the above must be present in an instance of the newsletter. just a few is enough. the whole thing should be short. it should fit on a page or two so that i can skim it through quickly. the goal of such a newsletter wouldn't be to fully inform people. it should be to raise awareness and interest about my peers. and since they are my peers, i can freely ask them in person about their short snippet from the newsletter. this means that the snippets are somewhat actionable for me. it gives the people relevant topics to chat about. such a newsletter probably doesn't make sense below 5 people and above a dozen people it starts getting irrelevant. it should be put together by the same person all the time so that quality remains constant.

on the other hand i can see that such newsletter might require lot of time investment and thus might not worth it. maybe it might make sense only when the team morale or cohesion is low. a team in such scenario could commit to make 6 issues (e.g. 1 per month for half a year) and then see if people find it useful or not. in case there's a newsletter already and if one doesn't find it too relevant, maybe one could ask the writers to include more items like the above. at least now i think i know what to ask for whenever someone tries to start a newsletter around me.

published on 2021-07-15

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