I’m enjoying Dave Pell’s legendary free daily newsletter NextDraft. Each day he writes up 10 short summaries of newsworthy items (in the broadest terms). Often unexpected, usually interesting, and always well-written. In a former time, this would have been a blog (and it is) but I am delighted to get it in my mail stream.
— Kevin Kelly
I discovered Dave Pell’s newsletter, Next Draft on May 26, 2019. I haven’t looked back. The Recommendo recommendation got me through the hellish year that was 2020. At first, I thought this was like Morning Brew, The Daily Skimm, or one of these other Newsletters that summarizes the latest news. What keeps me hooked on Dave Pell’s newsletter is knowing this is how I’d write my daily newsletter if I covered the news. Its advertising feels more grassroots, and his political stance is closer to my own. Plus, it’s not a business he’s trying to promote, like some of the former I mentioned.
He’s an expert at picking the latest news stories that are relevant, and downvoting the things that don’t matter as much, or should get less attention. I’ve found his perspective delightful, especially when he gets poetic about a major news story.
School shootings have become an epidemic, a childhood crisis, and a national shame. Aside from the shooters themselves, where do we place the blame for America’s deadly pastime? What about gunmakers who lobby for fewer regulations? What about lawmakers who tell social media execs they have blood on their hands while responding to mass playground slaughters by loosening already loose gun laws? What about those who make the deadly farcical argument that the musket-toting Founding Fathers wanted the second amendment to cover widespread ownership of deadly automatic weapons? So far, none of the above have been held to account.
— Dave Pell
If you want to read other things he’s written, he wrote a book about his experience with following the news so closely during the 2020 newscycle called Please Scream Inside Your Heart: Breaking News and Nervous Breakdowns in the year that wouldn’t end.
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