Relaunching Out in Left

Introducing a new format and subscriptions

Hello again—I’m changing the format to Out in Left, and I’m implementing paid subscriptions.

First, the format

Out in Left had focused on the intersection of sports and politics. I’m now going to write about everything. In this way, Out in Left will be a general interest newsletter. Normal humans call this (*winces*) a blog.

While I’ll still write about sports and politics, I will also write about music and urbanism and books and travel and cool people and whatever else I find interesting. My differentiator, as Substack puts it, is this: I’m an American that doesn’t own a car. This shapes my worldview and in turn my writing. 

Just 8.4% of households in the United States don’t have a car. In California, it’s 7.3%. In San Diego County, where I live, it’s even lower: 5.6%.¹ I imagine few of those households are single progressive Navy veterans who work in politics and write. No one else has my point of view, for better or worse. 

The reasons for this change are threefold:

1. No one cares about a free blog about sports & politics - most of all, Substack doesn’t care. The platform doesn’t promote or boost free newsletters, since the company won’t make money off of them.²

2. There are only so many ways I can say “Sports team owners are bad” - I have a day job, and essays are a demanding form. Not being able to cover the sports beat full-time limits my ability to generate content in that vein. I’m also a contributing sports writer at San Diego Magazine, so my output here was a little redundant.

3. I have more writing interests than sports and politics - I recently wrote about Oasis reuniting and it’s one of my favorite pieces, but I had to bug my friend

   Ryan Bradford
   to find a place for it.

The hope and selfishness of Oasis

Second, the subscriptions

It’s time for me to get paid for my labor. Please click the button below to choose your subscription tier.

What you get for supporting Out in Left:

1. Great writing - if I ever use a cliche, platitude, or overused idiom, then please run me over with an F-350.

2. Monthly features - long-form pieces are my bread and butter. 

3. Additional content - anything from profiles to audio content (like that in this post) will exist behind the paywall. 

4. Access to archives - there is a lot of great stuff in there.

All subscribers get the Out in Left Weekly.

Another driving force behind subscriptions is my long term goal of writing full-time. It’s not imminent—don’t worry, bosses—but Americans’ relationship with work is deranged. I don’t want to do wage labor all my life. Your support helps me achieve that goal.

What to expect from here

I’ll spend a few days hyping the relaunch, then I’ll get Out in Left back on its weekly

schedule with the paywall up. With that, I’ll leave you with my favorite piece of writing advice:

1. Statistics courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau. An aside: remember when the Trump Administration politicized the 2020 census? Joe Biden is the best president of my lifetime, in part because I don’t have to worry about the collection of fucking census data.

2. As of this writing, Substack and its billing contractor Stripe together skim about a dollar from every $5 monthly subscription.