I had been a member of Stratecherry. It is okay if it fills up your confirmation biases, but the newsletter revolved around specific topics alone. I personally prefer variety. It helps to connect the dots between the disparate ideas.
I had sent an email to him about how he manages the writing workflow. He’s a prolific writer with a published schedule. Not everyone can be an analyst like him (he only lives off the newsletter subscriptions), so I must assume that he’s not riding a personal jet. I am paraphrasing the vital bit of the long transcript (luckily, I didn’t have to hear).
I was, of course, expecting a little more polished workflow.
I do plan to write about TechMeme someday- it is an exciting service.
COWEN: How would you describe your media diet? What do you do to stay current?
THOMPSON: I read a lot of news. I get this question a lot. I think people find it unsatisfying, but I read a lot of news. I read a lot of newspapers. TechMeme has a list of all the stories of the day. Then when I want to write about something, I will do very deep dives on it and read extensively about that topic, in and around it. But as far as a regular habit, it’s a lot of news and, frankly, probably too much Twitter.
COWEN: What do you do to optimize what you might call reader input — emails you receive or WhatsApp messages— as a part of your daily workflow? Should you be doing more of that and less reading of news or vice versa? How do you balance those two things?
THOMPSON: The feedback is very valuable. I get lots of email every day from readers. I have a forum for members to post on. People send tweets to me all the time. I think it goes in a few ways. One, you do get really valuable, concrete feedback like this specific thing, like details about something, or you’re wrong about this and this is why — which is extremely valuable.
via Ben Thompson on Business and Tech (Ep. 52) – Conversations with Tyler – Medium
RadOncNotes 