Newsletters We’re Watching

Want something you’ll look forward to getting in your inbox in the morning?

Newsletters have come back with a vengeance. The modern media climate is so busy, readers barely have time to visit their favourite publications’ homepages directly (much less ones they don’t know). Simultaneously, thanks to smartphones, e-mail has become almost a reflex, with some people checking their phones 74 times per day.

While we all may know the main ones (we’re looking , there are some underdogs HackPack has been enjoying. If you want something slightly different, we make a point to experiment with newsletters we see cropping up. We look for snappy writing, something in tune with the readers, personality, attractiveness and something that’ll give us something to whip out for conversation at dinner parties. (We know, we know. We ask so little.)

Despite our impossible standards, we’ve found three that more than deliver. Try out some of our new favorites (they’re all free!)

The Daily Pnut: We love this newsletter for its scope — it does an amazing job at covering global issues. We’re also a sucker for its intelligent, sharp and yet eminently human voice. It’s like getting a 10 minute run-down from a good friend over morning coffee. An exceptionally smart good friend.

Finimize: The economy. Markets. Stocks. Bonds. Line graphs. We all know these things are important, and yet many of us have the most superficial grasp of what they mean. (Stocks up, good. Stocks down, bad. Avoid bankruptcy. That’s it, right?)

Finimize does an amazing job of condensing the world’s financial news into mere minutes of reading, and making it comprehensible. It explains what happened where, and why it matters to you and everyone else.

Also, it has a quote of the day. Who doesn’t love a quote of the day?

Piqd: Crowd sourced recommendations from the people who know the subjects best. Piqd (whose delightful tagline includes, ‘hand-piqd’) describes itself as “curators from journalism, science and politics recommend and comment on the web’s best content.”

Normally we sign up for articles sent to our inbox and let them pile up, promising to get to them and be thoroughly well-read and informed over a cup of coffee later. And then that later never comes. But piqd does a brilliant job of selected articles you’re actually interested in (you choose the exact topics you want to hear about) and helpful summaries. More than once, we’ve found ourselves scrolling through our inbox and stopping work (!) because we actually really do want to see what that article says.

*Don’t worry, none of these guys paid us to say any of this. We really just think you’ll like them.