The Monday Media Diet with Daniel Giacopelli

On Shreeji, Artwords, and The Barbican

Danny is a friend of WITI dating back to his Monocle days. He’s got a new project that is super interesting and worth checking out. Have a great week. -Colin (CJN)

Tell us about yourself.

I’m Danny and I write For Starters, a weekly newsletter that empowers creative people to start the small business of their dreams. I send inspiring biz stories, ideas, tips and tools to thousands of ‘starters’ every Friday.

Previously I was editor of Courier magazine, which in 2020 was bought by Mailchimp (where I work on editorial projects as my 9-to-5). Before that I was at Monocle – I built and hosted Monocle’s business podcast The Entrepreneurs for many years.

I’m a New Yorker by birth but moved to London in 2010. I’ve lived here ever since, barring an 18-month diversion in LA a few years ago (when I last appeared in these pages…)

Describe your media diet.

An obscene number of newsletters. At the moment reading a lot of The London Minute and The Londoner, Scope of Work, Craig Mod’s always excellent dispatches, SLOP, Dense Discovery, Creator Spotlight and, quite literally, hundreds of others. I’ve gotta prune.

Mountains of print mags via regular trips to Magculture, Shreeji and Artwords. I pick up The Economist at my local supermarket every week. The best value-for-money title you can buy? And I have snail-mail subscriptions to New York Magazine and LFI (Leica’s mag).

Shockingly few podcasts, given my former work. Almost none.

Social diet, in this order: Instagram, Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, X (trying to quit). No TikTok (too addictive). Dabbled with Bluesky but the habit didn’t stick. Threads-curious.

On weekends, paper editions of FT Weekend (along with HTSI) and sometimes the Sunday Times (UK)

What’s the last great book you read?

The Premonitions Bureau, by Sam Knight. The story of how a British psychiatrist tried to find people who could see the future following a mining disaster in the 60s.

What are you reading now?

There’s a French publishing company, Poursuite, with a wonderful series of photo books called Atlas des Régions Naturelles (ARN). The project is obsessively documenting the 450 small regions of France, with thousands of photographs of the buildings, shops, houses, barns, fences, etc and other architectural details of the landscapes. An unbelievably ambitious, wonderful, cool thing. Less ‘reading’ and more ‘absorbing’.

Also starting to read When We Cease to Understand the World, by Benjamín Labatut.

What’s your reading strategy when you pick up a print copy of your favorite publication?

FT and Economist I’ll read meticulously, like every word, because I’m a weirdo. Everything else I’ll scan for stuff that catches my eye.

Who should everyone be reading that they’re not?

Inque. High quality writing and creative, giant format, heavy as a doorstop, zero ads, and they’re making only 10 issues (one a year) and then it’s done. A project with a lifespan. Memento mori. They’re on issue 3 so you’ve got time.

Club Paper. A newspaper from ‘neighborhood work club’ Switchyards, which is currently expanding across parts of the US. I’m kinda obsessed. Look at this classifieds section. It doesn’t need to go this hard.

And any novels or novellas by the late great Jim Harrison or travel writing by the late great Jan Morris.

What is the best non-famous app you love on your phone?

As a millennial I’m now entering my ‘oh shit, look at all these birds’ era. Merlin Bird ID is so good. A cute family of goldfinches visits my balcony. I’ve played them a recording of their friends from the app and, though it probably deeply confuses them, they react and sing back.

Also: mymind. It’s where I save all the digital ephemera that ends up in For Starters each week.

Plane or train?

Took a lovely, long train from London to Glasgow recently. Infinitely more enjoyable than a flight.

What is one place everyone should visit?

The Barbican, where I live with my wife Kim. I’ll give you a tour of the residents’ gardens if you hit me up (seriously!)

Tell us the story of a rabbit hole you fell deep into.

Related to the above, I once woke up in the middle of night thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to know the history of this exact spot where I live, over hundreds of years?’ Not the history of the broader neighbourhood – that’s a Wikipedia search away – but, like, the history of the 100 square metres around me.

The Barbican, in the City of London (big C), was once part of Londinium, Roman London. Turns out that right in front of my window is where hundreds of Roman soldiers once lived, packed together in the city’s large fort. My 1960s brutalist building was also the site of a sprawling orchard in Tudor times, then a bustling commercial street, then crowded tenements, then was bombed to hell during the Blitz.

I found all this out by asking ChatGPT to do some heavy research for me. But is there an app for this? Using geolocation and AI to tell you the history of the exact spot you’re standing on. If not, someone should build it! Shit, maybe I should vibe code it tomorrow… (DG)