I enter the Coffee Room and make a beeline for my favorite corner, the one farthest from the lounge. I don't dislike that space, but my late night coffee is a solo activity that doesn't need interruption. I pick up a back issue of my favorite newsletter, Why is This Interesting?
In some ways, checking the newsletter folder within my inbox is a digital representation of my favorite activity from my childhood: grabbing the newspaper from the end of the driveway and running it back to the house in my bare feet. Despite the availability of news from any number of sources on the Internet, something about the care and thought put into a printed article is special to me. The permanence of a printed article meant that anything said would be immortalized and unable to be changed after the fact. A newspaper cannot delete an article like a Tweet or other post.
Newsletters make me feel the same way; anything that I receive in my inbox, provided it is not deleted, stays permanently available for my reading pleasure. More importantly, newsletters can give me the specific areas of the newspaper that I always flipped to first. It's comforting knowing that I can expect something at the same time each day or week, while also ensuring that I can "flip back through" any old favorite articles without fear that they've been replaced.
I finish the article on the humble flamingo, take one final sip of my coffee, and move to the fireplace to warm up before my journey home.
Slightly related for me due to origins in the classified ads sections of newspapers are "personals", something I've actually not perused in many years, now.
But, oh, how I'd love pouring over then in the Sunday "New York Daily News" when I lived "upstate". (And, ay yi yi, that even led to an ill-advised marriage, ay yi yi cubed....)
That eventually morphed to Craigslist's "Platonic Only" (I think that's what it was called..?) space (which was ultimately - not to mention sadly - discontinued).
I dunno. I just got a kick out of people putting what they believed to be their best self-summary-foot forward, as it were.
I did respond at times, but mostly to hopefully gain access to what I imagined to be a fascinating berg 'neath the icy tip o' the post.
And, of course, chances were quark-width thin - as they tend to be when hope-driven....
I never thought of newsletters that way, but coming to thing of it, you are spot on. While we used to (and still do) receive magazines in the mailbox, we get newsletter in our email inbox. Just like magazines, they are their own "copy" - they won't change. They can be archived.
I tend to associate the term newsletter with advertisement for some reason. While when I think about magazine, I think quality content. Funny how it's easy to associate feelings to words. While I don't feel like receiving newsletter, I'd love to receive virtual magazines in my inbox!