The Thing Worth Knowing for the Week of September 11, 2023

So we need to talk...

A year ago, my life was very different. Executive management at the site I worked for, Fanbyte, had decided to get rid most of the editorial staff. (You can read more about it here.) Over the course of a few hours, a number of great and talented folks found themselves out of a job. 

There was a pit in my stomach about the lives of my friends and colleagues being overturned, having gone through the same thing two years earlier when USgamer shuttered. There was also some survivor’s guilt, having skated through the layoffs with my job intact. Confidence in ZAM as a company dropped to zero though, so for me, it was time to find a new job.

While on the job search, I also decided to broaden my offerings to any potential employers. That’s where the idea of Stuff Worth Knowing came from: I was already following all of this daily news in gaming, tech, and entertainment, so why not round up the most important bits each week? The newsletter was weekly practice that might also look good for a future employer. 50 weeks later, I’m still here.

As I said before though, my life is very different. I’m no longer a journalist at all, having moved into the market I was covering. In addition to my day job, I also do some contracting on the side. I also have begun to pour more energy in creative projects. My time is simply getting tighter.

Each week’s newsletter takes a good deal of effort. Once I’m off work, my Friday evening is spent going over all the news of the week to see if I missed anything. Then Saturday afternoon and evening are spent researching and writing, because I’m not going to write up something that’s not accurate. It is, in all honesty, most of my weekend. 

That’s why I’m closing out this version of Stuff Worth Knowing. The weekly digest format is going away. I will probably continue to use Substack to post essays and hot takes about news I find meaningful, but that work generally flows much easier. It also doesn’t require a tiring weekly cadence. 

I wanted to close the newsletter out before some of the annual subscription renewals hit, and that deadline is coming up very soon. If you want to stay on the ride, awesome; just don’t expect a weekly release anymore! I also wanted to thank everyone who reads the newsletter every week (minus the two weeks I missed!). It’s been wonderful to see and I hope I kept you informed the entire time.