How can I make this newsletter better for you?
I'm on vacation for the eclipse. So instead of the usual Monday post, I have a request: tell me what you want!
TLDR: I'm on vacation so there's no normal post this week. R2 about doubled its subscribers since the June relaunch. I'd like to find out who's reading and ask how I can make this newsletter as interesting and useful as possible for you. Please take 5 minutes to fill out my short reader survey. Also, get in touch via email (or just respond to this post if you received it via email) to say hi and let me know what you want from the newsletter. I read and respond to every email from readers!
This week I'm in Madrid, hiding from the Spanish sun in an air-conditioned hotel room as I wait for a coincidence of celestial mechanics to blot out said Spanish sun for a few minutes on Wednesday afternoon: a total solar eclipse.
I was originally planning on queuing up a Q&A with Alex Ip of the Xylom for this week's vacation-edition post. But then Austria had to go and have its worst heatwave in recorded history last week. It was 30°C in my apartment for several days in a row (like most people in Austria, I do not have AC) and that heat is no joke. If I had a real job, I'd have taken sick leave since I was incapable of doing much more than lying in front of a fan, sleeping, and trying desperately to keep my brain from melting and dribbling out through my ears. So here I am on Monday with no post scheduled — and a timely opportunity to check in with you, reader, and find out what's working and what isn't.
Why timely? If you've been around for a while, you'll know that I re-launched the newsletter in June with a new focus on the systems and incentives that shape science and determine how it matters. (Before then it was basically a chaotic personal science blog.) Since the June relaunch, R2's readership has roughly doubled. I want to understand who's reading now and how I can make this newsletter as useful and interesting as possible for you.
So if you have a second, please fill out this short reader survey to let me know what's working and what isn't — and how I can make the newsletter a better value for paid subscribers. It'll take about 5 minutes, and I really will read each response.
If you're not a survey person, you can also just email me by responding directly to this email or shooting a message to elise@reviewertoo.com. I'd love to know:
- Who you are and why you're here
- What type of content you value most (news, essays, link roundups, etc.)
- What topics you're most interested in reading about
- What would make R2 a better value for paid subscribers
- Whether you'd be interested in things like crowdfunding specific reporting projects, AMA posts or streams, a Discord community, and other experiments
I feel like the reboot is working — both for me and for readers. I'm encouraged by the enthusiastic reactions to posts like my essay about how building trust in science isn't science journalism's job and my recent piece on the missing rung in Germany and Austria's academic career ladder. I'm having fun experimenting with data journalism, like I did in my post about gender in peer review at Science. I launched audio editions and they actually don't sound half-bad! And I even got a 1,000-word angry email about my trust in science post, which I take as an encouraging sign that I'm writing about topics people care about. As dire as things are for science journalism right now, it seems like there is an appetite for writing about science that's not science entertainment — and I'm excited about continuing to experiment and make the newsletter even better.
To everyone who's been here since the beginning: thank you for sticking with me through all the changes and experimentation. And to everyone who's new: welcome, I'm so glad you're here!
Running this newsletter costs me several hundred dollars a year and at least 10 hours of work each week. If you want R2 to keep existing, please consider signing up to support my work for less than $1 per post. Supporters receive a warm fuzzy feeling and actual perks: the archive of posts older than 2 weeks and audio editions recorded by me — no AI voice!
