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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
FT Alphaville had a long history of trying new things. Some have been successful, others have been abject failures. With the former firmly in mind and the latter mostly memory-holed, we are now launching a Substack.
Many readers have long asked for a newsletter of some kind, and will probably think this is hugely overdue. Others might be baffled, and worried that our output of financial and economic nerdery and occasional shitposting could become balkanised. So we thought we’d quickly explain why FTAV is doing this.
First of all, we want to stress that this is not a “move”. The blog itself will remain at the heart of Alphaville. This is just about recognising that not everyone has bookmarked our homepage, accepting the fickleness of search and stupidity of social media, and embracing the ability to get directly into your inboxes.
After all, that’s how we consume a lot of content as well these days, and we have had newsletters in the past.
So what will this new newsletter actually look like? Well, it’ll look a lot like regular Alphaville, and sweep together all our usual work together with some of the best stuff we’ve seen elsewhere.
After all, one of FT Alphaville’s founding principles is to acknowledge that we don’t command a monopoly on your attention. Another is to always link to the primary source. We’ll keep applying both of these principles with this newsletter, because to do anything else just wastes your time. We’ll try our hardest never to do that.
At the end of every ‘stack we’ll include a selection of killer charts we’ve spotted in the FT over the past week, because a squiggly line or scatter plot really can say a thousand words that we then don’t have to write. We’ll also use the newsletter to let people know about pub quizzes, chart shows, drinks dos and other IRL shenanigans we might come up with.
It’ll start off as a weekly thing, landing around midday Fridays, and will be (reluctantly) anchored by Bryce, as punishment for all the legal aggro he lands us in.
It will also be free, just like the blog. It would be cool if you tell your friends about us, but we won’t send any requests for pledges, contributions, “for the price of a cup of coffee” blah blah. This is just all the things that make FTAV FTAV, wrapped up in a convenient newsletter format.
The first one lands this Friday. Please sign up here and spread the word so that it doesn’t become another Mastodon debacle. 🙏
