⬜ Notes on format

Our editorial strategy.

Kyle Chayka: Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about neighborhood restaurants. There’s a great one on the block of my and Jess’s apartment in DC called Tail Up Goat. Every time someone asks me what kind of food they serve, I can’t quite answer. Kind of pan-Mediterranean, kind of farmers market American, sometimes Ottolenghi-ish — it doesn’t reduce to a single definition, but everything they serve is undeniably them. It clearly comes from a coherent vision. 

Tail Up Goat

Jess and I go to the restaurant not knowing exactly what to expect, sometimes just for a cocktail and a snack, sometimes for the full tasting menu. We’re always happy with whatever they come up with. Last time, they delivered us an off-menu concoction of a crispy, deep-fried puck of mashed potato, on a bed of sweet potato mash, topped with a pyramid of mandolined cauliflower slices tossed in chili oil. (They treat their regulars very well.) It made no sense and was totally surprising, but also one of the best bites I’ve ever eaten. 

What does this have to do with newsletter formats, or One Thing as a project? Idk, maybe it’s just a vibe. There’s a constant feeling of care and attention in a neighborhood restaurant. You get to know everyone, staff and customers alike. There are expected specialties as well as surprises. A context or frame of reference develops over many repeated visits. You get to know the operators’ taste. It is a finite, enjoyable experience beginning to end (scarcity creates meaning). These are all qualities I also want in a newsletter, or a new generation of media publication. 

In more literal terms, the plan for One Thing is to deliver, primarily, two newsletters a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, like a farmers market or a weekly happy-hour special. Somewhere between a tweet and a blog, never too long, filling the time it takes you to wait in the cafe line. We want you to stop by for what we’re serving and be happily surprised with what you get. We want to be reliable but always interesting. We want to get to know you and for you to get to know us. 

What unites the disparate subjects of this newsletter — sponges, philosophers, moka pots, Etsy vintage — is a sense of quality, specificity, and texture. We are against the generic, except to observe and critique it. OT is broadly about things you can consume. But it’s not a gift guide. It’s an ever-expanding catalog, a collection of ideas and products and people. Maybe it’s the representation of a perfectly browsable Soho boutique, in your inbox. 

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Nate Gallant: Let's begin with something not to expect. You will find here no moral takes nor evaluation of the whirring cauldron of digital media. I don’t know how it should be fixed. But, as a human bound to the internet and experiencing its spillover into fleshy reality, I know that “content creation” is exhausting me, and itself.

By content creation I mean the use of highly delimited platforms of expression, designed to someone else’s specifications for the sake of profit, to create something that can be consumed the instant it is produced. Most social media is a formulaic means of endless production, commodifying individuality like coal being shoveled into a train engine. Not particularly desirable, is it? We are not facing a novel problem, however. Production versus consumption; bland entertainment versus the search for art, or the specificity of curiosity; inspiration versus banality — these are conflicts as old as media. Therefore, we can try to solve it, by experimenting and creating a new form.

What is that form? Through discussions about internet detritus and the shared trawling of IRL DC haunts, we settled on a kind of corner-store microblogging, a throwback to slightly earlier eras of online culture. But don’t mistake it for nostalgia. The spaces of intimacy and creativity always have to be built and rebuilt, fought for and maintained. That is the engine of OT thus far. Can we build this form, one “thing” at a time into something that’s not totally predetermined or optimized? Beyond arguing about immediate relevance or importance, can we let our curiosities alone guide us toward a new direction? 

Authenticity is always controversial; it has this difficult but powerful binding property. By nature, it occasions conversation and argument. But we don’t want to recreate toxic Discourse. This is more about fun among cultural friends, the discussion at a dinner party.