The Monday Media Diet with Erin Griffith

On Primack, parasocial design relationships, and A Drinking Life by Pete Hamill

Erin Griffith (EG) is a friend of WITI and a reporter covering startups and VC. Happy to have her with us this week. -Colin (CJN)

Tell us about yourself.

I’m a reporter at the New York Times covering start-ups and venture capital. I was at Fortune for awhile and also Wired, Adweek and some other finance trade publications. I live in Berkeley. 

Describe your media diet. 

Being on the West Coast and not an early riser, I wake up every morning in a panic because I’m behind. I start by skimming the push alerts from the Times and the Journal. I also rely pretty heavily on WSJ and Bloomberg’s author-specific alerts for reporters I like and/or compete with. Then I go into the Times slack and read what else my colleagues on the biz desk have published so far.

Like anyone, I do not read all of the newsletters I subscribe to every day… but I try. My must-read list for work is Pro Rata by Dan Primack, StrictlyVC by Connie Loizos, Kate Clark’s Dealmaker newsletter and the daily Techmeme headlines newsletter. I also skim Money Stuff, Bloomberg Tech and Fortune’s Term Sheet and Data Sheet. 

Then for leisure, my current rotation includes The Spread by Rachel Baker and Maggie Bullock, Big Saladby Joanna Goddard, Gloria, Agents and Books by Kate McKean, Deez Links by Delia Cai, Links I would Gchat you if we were friends by Caitlin Dewey, Anne Friedman, Max Read and Feed Me by Emily Sundberg. And for local stuff there’s NYT’s California Today, Axios’s SF newsletter, Berkeleyside and Berkeley Scanner. 

I also have alerts on the WSJ Mansions section, which is just a delight. Like, this headline: A Six Flags Set Designer Brought the Wild West to Life Inside This $8.95 Million Georgia Home. Every sentence is absurd. The house contains an entire 4,000 square foot Western town with real buildings, fake dirt roads, horse hoofprints, and lighting settings for midnight, high noon and sunset! But it’s not just some generic Wild West, it is an exact replica of the set of the 1990s movie Tombstone. Also the house’s basement parks 35 cars. What? The property has 2 waterfalls. Of course it does! It was briefly city hall for the town that the owner founded and was mayor of. And on and on. I love it. 

Lastly, there is a group of influencers that could be categorized as fashion/lifestyle/DIY/home decor bloggers that I’ve been following for ages. Some for almost two decades, since LiveJournal days. My parasocial relationship with them has gotten a little sad because they’ve all been stepping back from the content game for various reasons. I miss them and have been pathetically refreshing their feeds / blogs waiting for some morsel of an update.

What’s the last great book you read?

A Drinking Life by Pete Hamill. Embodiment of what Jack Scafer was talking about in his essay on journalism swagger. 

What are you reading now?

I just started Rebel Girl by Kathleen Hanna. I’m also stuck in the middle of both All Things Are Too Small by Becca Rothfeld and Private Equity by Carrie Sun. I get most of my books via the public library’s Libby app, which is wonderful. The only downside is you have to wait for popular books, and I didn’t finish those two before my loan ran out so now I’m back on the waitlist. 

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

I love New York magazine. LOVE. It’s the best. I cherish my subscription. I read every word. If they ever stop printing it, I will be devastated. When a new issue arrives, I go straight to the Look Book. 

I also get the weekly paper from my rural hometown in Ohio. It usually arrives 2-3 weeks late and I pretty much exclusively read the obits. 

I’m curious if other people do either of these things, which seem normal to me but other people have told me are “chaotic.” For newspapers like the weekend Times, I toss sections I’ve finished on the ground. Floor = finished. It’s very satisfying. And for magazines, I’m always chronically behind and take enormous, heavy piles on trips with a mandate to not bring them home. 

Also, a holdover from a simpler time when I took the subway to work with a flip phone and amNewYork: If I’m in the office, at the end of the day, I print out all of the long read tabs I have open and read them on paper on the way home. A Gen Z colleague who witnessed this once told me she “loved” that I did this and I am still not sure if I was being insulted or complimented.

Who should everyone be reading that they’re not?

Foundering, the Bloomberg podcast. The most recent season by Ellen Huet about Sam Altman and OpenAI was so good. 

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

At the risk of sounding like a hustle bro, but I love the habit tracking app Way of Life. I’ve tried a variety of these apps and this is the one that has stuck. I even paid for the premium version. You can easily visualize how often you do or don’t complete a habit, but you don’t feel like a failure when you miss a day. Most important for me and my overly optimistic self-delusion is that it gives me a realistic picture of my habits. So, even though it might feel like I’ve been very good about practicing piano, or not ordering takeout, or going to bed early (or whatever the goal is), the app can show me the reality very clearly in red and green. 

Also, another plug for Libby, which is such a gift. 

Plane or train?

I am very productive on planes. Turns out being forced to sit in one place with slow internet and no other distractions is great for focusing. 

What is one place everyone should visit? 

Your local independent movie theater! I worry they will not exist in a few years. (This answer is probably for myself more than anyone reading. I would like to go to the movies more than I do.)  

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

I am obsessed with start-up fraud and often spend way too much time digging around in legal filings of cases I’ll probably never write about. I convinced my editors to let me cover this one. This deep dive post about Lamba School was pretty wild, too. (EG)

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Thanks for reading,

Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Erin (EG)

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