my little media ecosystem
Welcome to Mommy’s El Camino.
You might recognize the image above. It’s from The New York Times’ game Wordle. I haven’t been a subscriber since December 2024, when I decided I could no longer tolerate the NYT’s various modes of manipulating stories to serve the interests of those in power. Unfortunately I forgot that the word games are a separate subscription package, as is Cooking, and my annual subscriptions to those automatically renewed. I’m mentally preparing myself to be cut off from the word games and the recipes this December, when I will cancel the auto-renewal. On occasion I do want to read a story here and there and for that, I use the gift links feed on Bluesky, or I ask my partner with an institutional account to send me a gift link, or I use my Los Angeles Public Library card to log in. But I can’t justify $upporting them any longer.
I started making a list of all the different kinds of media I’ve been either discovering or relying on in this super weird timeline where news outlets are laying off, folding, or hiring extremely unreliable people to run them.
There may have been a time when it made more sense to subscribe to the NYT, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. The latter two being owned by billionaires (and their really bad business decisions that cater to those in power) is part of why I won’t support these papers either.
In no particular order, these are the sources I choose to pay, for news, for culture writing, and more:
The Main Event by stacy-marie ishmael
The Trend Report by Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick
Today in Tabs by Rusty Foster
The Sword and the Sandwich by Talia Lavin and David Swanson
Torched by Alissa Walker
Laur’s Poetica by Lauren Eggert-Crowe, benefitting The Sameer Project
LAist (intermittently: I’m still mad they made a podcast that felt like an attempt to rehabilitate the image of former LA city council president Nury Martinez).
It’s a long list. It’s possible I’m even forgetting a couple. This list also excludes the newsletters I subscribe to for free.
I obviously can’t read every single thing these outlets or humans are putting out, but I read as much as I can. I try to limit the amount of substack newsletters I subscribe to and pay for (why? here you go), so there’s only a couple here, by design. Otherwise, I’m just trying to support the people and news outlets I want to see continue.
Thanks for including me among your list of people you read. Take good care of you and yours.
my books are waiting to be read by you