Since 2017 we have taken time at the end of each year to honor some of the year's best journalistic work from individual producers, small magazines, and larger journalistic outlets.
You can read past editions with the links below:
One thing you'll notice as a growing trend, if you've followed these for awhile, is that the journalistic industry is going through a big sort right now for the simple reason that we have established digital-era business models for small producers (Substackers, mostly, though you could arguably put YouTubers and podcasters in this category as well) and for large-scale national outlets, such as the New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and a small batch of political magazines whose life tends to concentrate around the DC area but still enjoy a somewhat large national audience.
What has dropped off dramatically is the mid-range of small magazines. When I started doing these I would scan the archives of places like Pacific Standard, Gawker, Books and Culture, Grantland, and Acculturated for honorees. All of those outlets are now (basically) dead. Other endeavors like Buzzfeed News and Huffington Post's longform feature are also basically dead.
To be sure, I'm thankful that Substack has stepped into this space, thereby insuring that there are ways to make a living as a writer aside from landing a gig at one of the very few national-level outlets that are on sound financial footing and which also tend to hire from a very small number of institutions.
That said, as Max Read observed recently, the kind of writing Substack's model incentivizes is not necessarily journalistic:
My standard joke about my job is that I am less a “writer” than I am a “textual YouTuber for Gen Xers and Elder Millennials who hate watching videos.” What I mean by this is that while what I do resembles journalistic writing in the specific, the actual job is in most ways closer to that of a YouTuber or a streamer or even a hang-out-type podcaster than it is to that of most types of working journalist. (The one exception being: Weekly op-ed columnist.) What most successful Substacks offer to subscribers is less a series of discrete and self-supporting pieces of writing--or, for that matter, a specific and tightly delimited subject or concept--and more a particular attitude or perspective, a set of passions and interests, and even an ongoing process of “thinking through,” to which subscribers are invited. This means you have to be pretty comfortable having a strong voice, offering relatively strong opinions, and just generally “being the main character” in your writing. And, indeed, all these qualities are more important than any kind of particular technical writing skill: Many of the world’s best (formal) writers are not comfortable with any of those things, while many of the world’s worst writers are extremely comfortable with them.
So, part of your job as a Substacker is is “producing words” and part of your job is “cultivating a persona for which people might have some kind of inexplicable affection or even respect.” And then there’s a whole other part of your job, which is: “Internet marketing.” One thing that I like about Substack, and one reason I recommend it as a platform to people who are just starting out, is that it leverages its status as a platform to help you grow via network effects without you needing to do much. But you are the business owner here, and there are still internet-marketing type considerations you need to think about, at least to some extent. “Conversions” and “funnels” and “click-through rates,” and so on. This can be a rough adjustment if you are not a naturally entrepreneurial person, or have not been constructed as an entrepreneurial subject by virtue of being a college-educated millennial meritocrat, or if that subject-interpellation failed because you have Anxiety!
In effect, this means that the journalistic voice and sensibility that one once found in newspapaers and small magazines is increasingly difficult to find today because the jobs that sustained them are largely disappearing. Instead, we have a virtual infinity of styles via Substack existing alongside a kind of safe "centrist" style in the elite national outlets. ("Centrist" here doesn't necessarily mean truly centrist, but something more like "centrist as it seems relative to the heavily progressive institutions from which elite media outlets tend to attract their staff.")
This also means that the way I've approached the Eliot Awards has had to shift because the things I gravitated to in the past as a reader are harder to find. So this year's honorees are treated as three separate things: small producer honorees, small magazine honorees, and national outlet honorees.
Small Producers
Winner: Freya India has been my favorite Substack this year. In particular I thought her piece on the insufficiency of new religions was excellent.
Honorable Mentions: Freddie de Boer is consistently excellent. This piece on the over-optimization of everything is my favorite of his from this year.
Rhys Laverty's post about nonsense poetry was a delight.
Samuel James has an excellent evangelical Substack to follow. His piece on The Crown and why the self is boring was my favorite of his this year.
Ben Thompson largely invented this entire part of the industry via his Stratechery newsletter. His piece "MKBHDs For Everything" was his best of the year.
Paul Kingsnorth's essay on "the void" has been one of the most important for me this year.
Brad East's taxonomy on tech attitudes was helpful.
Kirsten Sanders is another one of my favorite Substackers. Her piece on vice is essential.
Addison del Mastro is a fantastic follow if you're into urban policy. His post on why you shouldn't have to "support" locally owned shops is great.
Small Magazines
Winner: My favorite small magazine piece of the year was Sam Kriss's article in Compact about what happened after he bought everything that was advertised in a single issue of National Review.
Honorable Mention: Over at Plough I really loved James Wood's piece on "the autonomy trap."
Don't miss Kevin Williamson on the Springfield, Ohio pet story.
Daniel Schillinger's review of Anton Barba-Kay in The Point is one of my favorite tech pieces from this year.
Dustin Guastella wrote a sharp piece for Jacobin about the post-religious American right.
John Ehrett's "Christendom After Comcast", published in Ad Fontes, is essential if you want to understand why ecclesiology and the communal cultivation of Christian character have both become such complex problems in recent years.
Maria Baer wrote about learning the violin in Plough.
Luke Bretherton's Comment essay on the conversion of public intellectuals is probably the best thing I've read on that phenomenon this year.
Andrew Errington's piece on Bluey and forgiveness is a delight.
Devin Thomas O'Shea's piece on Panera Bread published in The Nation is excellent.
Kirsten Sanders wrote an excellent piece for Comment on images of Christ.
John Shelton's piece on Niebuhr and the Christian humanists in Providence is another one of my favorites from this year.
Large Outlets
Winner: The best major outlet piece I read this year came from Clint Smith in The Atlantic on the problem of forgiveness in post-genocide Rwanda.
Honorable mention: Emma Green's deep dive on large families for The New Yorker was another excellent investigative piece from this year.
Jennifer Valentino-DeVries and Michael H. Keller wrote one of the grimmest but also most important features of the year for the Times on pedophilia and child "influencers" on social media.
Casey Cep's review essay on two books about Harriet Tubman is one of the best pieces I read in The New Yorker this year.
Onsi Kamel's essay on Arabic as a Christian language was another one of my favorite pieces this year.
Brad Littlejohn and Clare Morrell's piece on the soft tyranny of smartphones is essential.
John Shelton wrote an intriguing essay on "family-focused fusionism."
Jake Meador
Jake Meador is the editor-in-chief of Mere Orthodoxy. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Commonweal, First Things, Books & Culture, The Dispatch, National Review, Comment, Christianity Today, and Plough. He lives in his hometown of Lincoln, NE with his wife and four children.
