The Sunday Digest: Rounding Down

Ah, December. The month of snow (depending on where you are), daylight savings (also…depending on where you are), and holidays (depending on which ones you celebrate). Okay, clearly not all of those things are universal. One thing that is, though? The Year in Review.

Right now, Best Of lists are confirming or inflaming opinions on movies, music and the like, or alerting audiences to new obsessions. Article roundups are bringing second waves of attention to the best writing readers have devoured or missed. News outlets are looking at everything they’ve covered, either to tell us what the world was like before it turned upside down, or to remind us that things were already their own kind of crazy in the early months of this year. 

Of course, that’s been the case in end-of-year media for quite a while. But in 2020, the look-back wave has been more pronounced than usual. That makes sense: everyone needs to process a year we know we can never forget, and mostly wish we could.

In that spirit—and because we’re (jolly) contrarians—this week’s Digest looks forward, not back, because we’re still making new stuff even as the year winds down. That’s what we’re delivering here: the original news, analysis, and insight we packed the Bundle with this week.

We’ve got a systems-based explanation of why a certain founder was right to say “Content Is King” 15 years ago; a tasty ride through a novelist’s randomness-based organization system; plus analysis of seven days of news that didn’t let up in reach or scale, from a landmark legal decision to a game launch-turned-fiasco. Oh yeah, and a little thing called Substack Reader. 

So if you’re a little bit exhausted from thinking about all of 2020, come read about one slice of it—but if you’re looking for roundups, don’t fear! Watch this space next week for a Holiday Reading List from all of the bundle writers.

Till then, read up.

What We Published

The lowdown on this week’s output, including 6 articles, 3 podcasts, and 2 live conversations.

📝 ARTICLES 📝

🔮 Why Content is King

by Nathan Baschez in Divinations

If you listened to the most recent Talk Therapy (see below), you know Nathan stayed up pretty late to write this. It paid off—just like the “increased investment” of the biggest media companies invariably results in “increased success,”