Heavy Weather: A Year One Retrospective and Consumer Report™️

Last week, Heavy Weather turned one year old! Although I didn’t start publishing consistently until February of this year, I want to commemorate this milestone by writing a retrospective about what it’s been like to run this newsletter and detail some changes to come.

Freelance journalism when you have no industry connections (the eternal chip on my shoulder) is rough. Thankfully, I’ve been able to carve out a small niche for myself as one of the few people who can write about Puerto Rico competently. I’m accustomed to sending something to an editor, then having it be published into the digital aether without much feedback. And with the rise of AI slop, sometimes it feels like those words matter less than ever before.

However, seeing people subscribe to Heavy Weather to make sure they get my little essays hot and fresh in their inbox every week has been an incredible salve against the doomerism that comes with being a modern man of letters (read: journalist? blogger? shitposter?). The fact that people want to read what I have to say will never not leave me astounded. That people want to pay me for it directly leaves me completely speechless. Writing this newsletter has been one of the most emotionally fulfilling things I’ve done in the four-ish years I’ve been working as a journalist. (Coincidentally, the four year anniversary of the first article I ever wrote was on June 3).

I really want to express my deepest gratitude to every single person who’s become a paid subscriber or donated. THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART. Without you, this newsletter would literally not exist and it would be impossible for me to pay for the court documents, MuckRock requests, and all the other ancillary reporting/writing costs that power this newsletter. Even though Heavy Weather is nowhere close to being sustainable, you’ve laid down the bricks needed to reach that eventually. Without you, there would not be any scoops, essays, or documents to publish here.

I find it extraordinary that people are willing to reach into their wallets to support real human writing that makes them feel something, which is always my goal whenever I write. This doesn’t mean that my work always has to instill a positive feeling, though. It could make you feel scared and depressed, or just plain informed. The important thing is that my soul is legible through the words. Heavy Weather doesn’t necessarily have a consistent brand outside of “keeping tabs on collapse,” a slogan so broad that it could mean anything. That’s by design. I don’t know what I’m going to write every week, but I do know that people respond positively to words that are obsessed with the thing they’re describing, which I think I do well enough most days.

I’m definitely going to continue publishing Heavy Weather for the foreseeable future. There’s things that I’ve been working on that I know people will like to read, and it’s a great habit to write 2,000-3,000 words a week because it keeps my brain sharp. I also love recommending books, movies, music, and video games to people because there are a great many cool things in the world that are terribly underappreciated. 

With that said, I want to ask every person reading this for a favor. 

When I first started thinking about making a newsletter, I briefly considered hosting it on Substack because I saw people talk about how much the recommendation algorithm helped creators with small followers grow. However, shortly after that, I started reading about the site’s Nazi problem, which I was only vaguely aware of before becoming a prospective newsletter entrepreneur. I discarded that option because I would have felt icky driving people’s money to a site like that. Then, I happened upon Ghost. People whose writing I enjoyed raved about the platform and talked about continuing to grow after switching out of Substack. However, what I failed to consider is that these people already had big followings from other social media platforms and were able to grow it because of that popularity. With a measly 3,000 followers on the dead website that is Twitter and substantially less everywhere else, a guy like me is not going to see similar growth anywhere near what these people described.

While this may sound like I’m moving to Substack, I’m definitely NOT doing that. However, I am asking you to share this newsletter as far and wide as you can. Whether you’re a free subscriber or a paid one, a fresh convert or an oldhead, please tell everybody who you think would like it to read and subscribe. Word of mouth is KEY to the growth of a newsletter like this because a recommendation from a friend is much more convincing than me posting a skeet to Bluesky that says “hey, you don’t know who i am but you will definitely like this!” You can tell them it’s a great newsletter filled with news they can’t get anywhere else, essays about societal collapse, and a killer media recommendation algorithm (my brain). Tell everybody who will listen and maybe even some that won’t!

And if you’re a free subscriber, please consider becoming a paid subscriber so you can get access to the paywalled media recommendations. If you want a preview of what that looks like, click here. 

Okay. Now to detail some of the changes that are coming.

I have sadly internalized that nobody reads anymore and that most people do not consume any news unless it comes in video or podcast form. To get around this problem that is actively biting society in the ass and will continue to do so for ages to come, I’m going to start turning some of the evergreen essays and news articles into short-form videos to share on TikTok and other social media. The purpose of these videos will be to reach far more people than a 2,000+ word article ever could and to, hopefully, drive subscriptions to the newsletter. It shouldn’t be too hard since I’m already semi-accustomed to making these for the folks at 9 Millones and The Latino Newsletter (throw money at them so they can throw money at me through freelance pieces).

You can follow me on Bluesky, TikTok, and Instagram to see them as early as next week hopefully. 

The second big change coming to Heavy Weather is that I’m bumping the price for a paid subscription from $3/month to $5/month. This WILL NOT affect people who are currently paid subscribers. If you’re a $3 paid sub and you get charged the new price, please let me know immediately and I will refund you the extra cost. There are many reasons for this change, the most prominent being that I was undervaluing my own work and all of the money that I put into this newsletter out of my own wallet.

Let’s dive into the numbers a bit: Heavy Weather currently has 47 subscribers, 32 of which are free and 15 are paid. That adds up to a cool $40/month, which is more money than I thought I would be making to be honest. There’s also been one donation of $50. (Thank you again to every single person who’s ever sent me money!) Most of the paid subs are from people that know me, either in meatspace or hyperspace. Over the last 90 days — as far back as Ghost analytics lets you see — the majority of my subscribers have come from being recommended by the Bleeding Edge newsletter (shout out to Ali Winston). Meanwhile, the second place where most of my subscribers has been from is Twitter even though I don’t really post there anymore.

According to Stripe, Heavy Weather has made about $422 over the course of its lifetime. If you assess my time as being worth exactly $0, then that has gone towards:

• The $108/year Ghost starter plan, which allows for up to 500 members (someday we’ll get there).
• The ~$9/year for the “heavyweather.media” domain (I got a great deal, but it goes up to $53.14/year in the second year and beyond).
• And whatever’s left over goes towards getting those sweet, sweet documents that I love to get my dirty little hands on.

Journalism written by a real human person — especially the document-heavy reporting that I do here — costs money. Getting court documents costs .10 cents per page and at least $2 per MuckRock request through their professional plan (FOIA requests are free but there’s no way I could keep track of them by myself). Those costs can grow significantly if an agency doesn’t give me a fee exemption, which thankfully hasn’t happened yet and hopefully never will. I try to be very transparent about how expensive this can get, which is why every article reported through documents has a callout like this:

Heavy Weather has a very clear enticement to upgrade from free to paid: the paywalled recommendations in the weekly Weather Reports, which contain exactly one book you should read, one movie you should watch, at least three songs you should listen to, and a whole hosts of links to articles, videos, and podcasts you should consume. Soon enough, there will be another reason to become a paid subscriber by way of paywalled “behind the scenes” articles that go through my process of reporting stories I write for freelance outlets and also include any information that was left on the cutting room floor. I also want to write more media criticism essays. If you’re a Zoomer, this is like a video essay without the video part. Although, I’m not ruling out making a few video essays here and there, like I’ve done before.

I’ve put all the older posts behind an emailwall so they don’t get scraped by AI and used for a content stealing machine. However, I’m not super sure I’m going to be doing that for new articles because it pisses me off when I want to read just one article and they make me sign up to get access to it. If you have feelings about this either way, please let me know down in the comments.

Those are pretty much the only big changes that will be coming to the newsletter. However, there might be some minor changes, like tweaking the shade of purple I use as an accent colour or something like that.

If you’ve made it ~1,900 words into this article about newsletter marketing and logistics, and you’re not subscribed for some reason, please rectify that immediately. If you’ve been reading the newsletter and enjoyed it, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. If you want a preview of what paid subscribers get, the Weather Report celebrating the anniversary does not have a paywall. 

That’s pretty much it for this Heavy Weather: A Year One Retrospective and Consumer Report™️. I feel like people like it when the things they pay for are open and honest about their plans and where their money goes. So, I hope I’ve been able to express that in a way that doesn’t sound like I think of this as exclusively a “business” and not something I genuinely love doing. I’m incredibly thankful that people are willing to pay for what I write. Thanks again to the people pay me to keep doing it. I work very hard to make my little posts enjoyable to read, have well thought out arguments, or deliver some new bit of information that nobody’s ever heard before. 

Thank you for reading.

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