Fingers, The Border Chronicle, Technically Food, Year 2049, and Product Growth
and multigrain pancakes with bacon in Malibu
Welcome to the fourth edition of Top of The Stack 🥞.
Every Sunday I share five indie newsletters that you probably haven’t heard of. My goal is threefold:
make it easy for you to discover awesome indie newsletters.
help authors grow their audiences.
share pancake pics.
If you discover a newsletter here, I hope you’ll subscribe and follow the author on Twitter! If you have a newsletter (or a pancake pic) to share, @me on Twitter! @samdebrule
1. Fingers
Drinking culture • 3 emails/week • Thousands of subscribers
Fingers is an independent newsletter by Dave Infante about drinking culture, being online, and beyond, read by thousands of people each week. It’s a smart, funny, and utterly unorthodox mix of award-winning journalism, interviews, and cultural criticism about how, what, and why we drink—and the money, power, and politics that both dictate and derive from the answers to those questions.
Follow the author on Twitter: @dinfontay
2. The Border Chronicle
Climate change • 2 emails/week • Thousands of subscribers
Local newsrooms have been decimated in recent years, along with the decline of accurate, community-based reporting. Much of the void has been filled with propaganda and misinformation generated by people who don’t live on the border, let alone care about it. What we get instead is “border theater,” which is the cynical manipulation of information and imagery to burnish political careers or boost media ratings at the expense of our communities. The Border Chronicle would like to change that.
We are Melissa del Bosque and Todd Miller, and we’re both longtime journalists based in Tucson, Arizona, who have spent decades writing about border communities in Mexico and the United States. Cumulatively, we have 40 years in the field reporting for media outlets from The New York Times to In These Times and writing books about the region.
Follow the author on Twitter: @MelissaLaLinea
3. Technically Food
Technology • 1 email/week • Hundreds of subscribers
There’s a slew of news these days that we could all easily get buried under. Technically Food, my newsletter (and book of the same name) will give you the context behind what’s bubbling up in the food world. Maybe it’s Bill Gates saying we need to eat “synthetic meat,” or it’s the hot ingredient or a new technology that claims to save our food system. What should we be asking when we read the alluring headlines?
My newsletter will bring both sides of the food world—it can save us, it may not save us—filtered through my lens. Are you an investor, editor, writer, foodie, chef, scientist, startup founder, it’s easy to get swept up in the excitement for “NEW,” which means you’re missing the big picture.
Follow the author on Twitter: @lzimberoff
4. Year 2049
Technology • 1 email/week • Hundreds of subscribers
We live at an important time in the history book of humanity. So much is changing around us, for better or worse. Just think of how much has changed since you were a kid and you’ll start to feel old (shoutout to the Sony Walkman).
Now imagine how much more is going to change in the coming decades. The future is overwhelming to think about when we’re constantly bombarded with news, bold predictions, and lots of hype around things we don’t understand well enough. I feel overwhelmed by it too. My goal is simple: I want to make the future less scary for all of us.
Follow the author on Twitter: @fawziammache
5. Product Growth
Technology • 1 email/week • Thousands of subscribers
I make product management, growth, and technology trends fun. Content is everywhere. The challenge today is to find the right content to consume in your limited time. Product growth is all about diving into product growth, company case studies, and new tech trends with whimsy…The goal is for product growth to be a cross between fun and informative writing. Think The Serial podcast, with its great storytelling, crossed with Benedict Evan’s Newsletter, with its great insights.
Follow the author on Twitter: @aakashg0
