Newsletters That Don’t Really Feel Like Newsletters (and Why They Work)
When people talk about newsletters, they often mean a specific thing: a personal note, a predictable structure, a sense of cadence and continuity.
But some of the most interesting newsletters today quietly ignore that playbook.
They use email not as a genre, but as a delivery channel—and the result is work that feels closer to essays, research logs, memos, or living documents than to “issues.”
Here are a few concrete examples, and what they reveal about where newsletters are headed.
Stratechery — The Analytical Memo
Ben Thompson rarely reminds readers that they’re reading a newsletter. Stratechery pieces read more like internal strategy memos: tightly argued, assumption-heavy, and unapologetically long.
There’s no small talk. No “hope you’re well.” No attempt to soften the thinking.
What makes it work:
- Readers come for analysis, not personality
- Each piece stands alone, but compounds over time
- The archive matters as much as the inbox delivery
Stratechery could exist as a paid research service or a book series. Email is simply the most efficient way to deliver it.
The Diff — The Field Report
The Diff doesn’t feel like a conversation—it feels like a briefing.
Each edition is dense with examples, financial context, and pattern recognition. The voice is present but restrained; the point is to map terrain, not perform.
What makes it work:
- It assumes an attentive, repeat reader
- It treats business and markets as systems
- It rewards rereading and cross-referencing
In practice, it behaves more like an ongoing research notebook than a traditional publication.
Not Boring — The Narrative Engine
Not Boring is often described as a newsletter, but it’s closer to long-form narrative nonfiction delivered by email.
Issues are expansive, thematic, and often closer to magazine features than posts. They don’t rely on a fixed structure so much as a recognizable voice and ambition.
What makes it work:
- Readers expect depth, not frequency
- The work is designed to be shared and archived
- Each piece feels intentional, not routine
Email is the distribution layer; the product is the writing itself.
Dense Discovery — The Curated Artifact
Dense Discovery looks, at first glance, like a link roundup. In reality, it’s a carefully shaped artifact.
Each issue is designed, paced, and sequenced with unusual care. The result feels closer to a small magazine or exhibition than to a typical “here are some links” email.
What makes it work:
- Design and restraint do as much work as words
- Curation is opinionated, not exhaustive
- The format is consistent, but never mechanical
It demonstrates that newsletters don’t have to be chatty to feel personal.
Works in Progress — The Public Draft
Some newsletters are interesting precisely because they don’t present themselves as finished.
Works in Progress often reads like thinking in motion: provisional ideas, partial arguments, policy sketches that may evolve or be abandoned.
What makes it work:
- Readers feel invited into the process
- Certainty is replaced by seriousness
- The value is in direction, not conclusion
In this mode, the newsletter becomes a workspace, not a broadcast.
What These Have in Common
Despite their differences, these newsletters share a few important traits:
- They don’t rely on ritualized structure
- They treat the reader as capable and patient
- They produce work that would still matter outside the inbox
- They accumulate value over time
In other words, they don’t optimize for being newsletters.
They optimize for doing a specific kind of work well.
The Takeaway for Creators
The most useful question may no longer be:
“What kind of newsletter should I write?”
But instead:
“What kind of work am I actually trying to publish—and what’s the simplest way to deliver it?”
For many creators, the answer still turns out to be email.
Just not email that announces itself as such.