The "Last, and Maybe Least" Edition

Hello, Hello, Hello, friends, friends, friends —

Sorry, there’s an echo here in the bunker.

The origin story of the LZ Sunday Paper is this:

In my last few years at Comcast NBC Universal (rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?) I was in charge of a bunch of different channels, networks, and on-line sites. Maybe a few cats and dogs, too.

One of those animals was a marketing initiative called Women At NBCU. We had the idea to invite women in senior positions across various business sectors to meet a few times a year to share consumer insights marketing tips. So I called about 30 women who I knew one way or another. They came from media, advertising, marketing, finance, and entrepreneurship. I explained the concept and asked if they would join. Every single one said yes. I thought to myself that if is impressive group was so interested, there must be a gap in the business marketplace that we were filling. Although there were a couple of big conferences, I guess there just weren’t enough chances for women to regularly talk business, meet a few people they didn’t know, and have some fun.

About twice a year we would get the group together. We would make a presentation to the group about a topic we thought was interesting and relevant, with a q&a along the way. Sometimes we would just pick a topic and have a robust discussion amongst ourselves. Then we’d go and do something kind of special.

One time we went to go see the fine jewels and jewelry that were coming up to auction at Christie’s, before the public pre-sale viewing was open. It was cool! They let us touch the pieces and even try them on. I looked marvelous in a tiara, I’ll have you know!

Once a year we’d have a much bigger gathering with a couple of hundred invitees. We’d invite a person to tell us what they thought about their world, someone a little outside ours. The first invite went to Sheryl Sandberg. She gave a great presentation about why Facebook was going to be very, very important for women, in particular. It seems ridiculous but it wasn’t that obvious yet. Talk about data! Those folks at FB sure were good at that. Later, I definitively remember talking about the presentation with someone high, high up in the NBCU organization who had been there. His assessment: it was pretty good, but “maybe she’s an empty suit.” True fact.

We invited other amazing women — Billie Jean King, Martha Stewart, Tyra Banks. For some reason we invited Nancy Pelosi to come talk to us soon after she became Speaker of the House (the first time). We couldn’t believe it when she said yes! Everyone delivered phenomenal insights and stories of achievement I wish I could find the whole list. (BTW Nancy, if you’re reading this— I still adore you but would you please stop texting me? It’s OVER, if you haven’t heard…)

Anyhoo, the Women At NBCU group was going strong. We had so many “insights” and so much “data” that we stared a little email round-up called the “Women At NBCU Newsletter.” At first, we sent it to the 40’ish people on the Council. As Heather Locklear said, “they told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on.”

Years later, when it came time to leave NBCU, I thought a newsletter of some sort could be valuable to an even wider group. Maybe less business, more fun. More opinion-y. I could even curse once in a while.

So in January of 2014 I launched the first issue of the LZ Sunday Paper. It’s in the archive of my very handy dandy LZ Sunday Paper Website, in case you care for a trip down memory lane.

Content-wise, I have been pretty consistent over the years. From the issue 1 onwards, I’ve always kicked off with a Pic(k) Of The Week, shared a few links (the early editions were not divided into themed sections like it has been for many years) and ended with What’s Not To Love About?… The top note from me started out very brief. It explained what the newsletter was all about. And then sometimes I began to share an opinion or two…

I loved my initial branding which was based on a “what’s black & white & re(a)d all over?” ‘zine style. OG’ers— remember?

Then I started to create themed mastheads for holidays, occasions, and moods, somewhat modeled on the Google Doodle concept.

When I think back to ten years ago, about the value of the newsletter, I think about how it was actually kind of hard to find a lot of articles online. It took time. People were still reading paper magazines and newspapers, apps hadn’t taken off, social media was nascent. Google was different. There was no Apple News. There were specialized internet “readers” that synthesized things but they were cumbersome. So I was doing a big service to folks by “reading the internet” every week.

Also at that time, the mainstream papers weren’t writing so much about topics from women’s perspectives. There were way more “niche” women’s publications, mostly online. Jezebel, Manrepeller, Refinery29, Bustle, Bitch Media, Vagenda, The Everygirl, The Skimm, Bust Magazine are just a few. These digital outlets distinguished themselves from the mainstream women’s magazines of the analog era. I was happy to explore them every week and offer a couple of pointed tidbits to the LZSP readership.

Over time, places like The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Washington Post, The Guardian, CNN.com, Time Magazine and everyone else started to devote entire sections to “Women” or at least hire some women to write about things that, I guess, the male journalists and editors didn’t think was so interesting. Women’s magazines started to make an effort to expand beyond fashion and beauty to have real takes on “issues.” So the smallest pubs with the biggest voices got squeezed out.

Then, instead of scraping the web for news about women that was hard to find, my value became sifting through the “endless scrolls” of more mainstream places. There’s actually so much news about women and the things we care about, the things that jam your feeds and inboxes, it was helpful for me to sort through those! Now it’s frustrating, though, for readers who click on an article I had chosen for them, only to be stopped by a paywall.

The same way we might have reached the peak of “Peak TV,” I think we may also have reached the peak of “Peak Curation.” The inordinate number of newsletters out there now, the “algorithmic” recommendations in your feeds, the billion Substacks — enough.

So for as many reasons there were to begin the LZ Sunday Paper, there may be even more reasons to stop.

Ten years ago, when I sent my first issue, numerous women wrote to me and said something like, “I’m so sorry, I really like you and your newsletter but I have so much in my inbox and I already feel so guilty, I just don’t think I can take my precious Sunday morning and have to do another email ‘chore.’ “

Only women would take the time to *apologize* in advance for not reading something that they didn’t ask for in the first place! I emailed back to every single person and said it’s okay, no big deal— you can just hit delete and get on with your day. No problem at all.

But then the most amazing thing began to happen. Within weeks, I started to get emails that said things like “I take a sacred twenty minutes in bed, even before my coffee, to read your newsletter.” Or “that time alone with this newsletter is the only time I know I will have to myself all day.” Or my favorite, “I read your newsletter before I open the New York Times”! It was an amazing transformation.

On the way out, the email outpouring has been substantial. Thank you— they made me feel really, really good:

Thank you for having the foresight and thoughtfulness to do this and for creating a platform. My world has been the richer for it. — Christie

Maybe you could pull a Jon Stewart and only curate one out of every four issues? Or something like that? — Suzanne

Lauren, you are amazing for your commitment to your fans - like me.  :) — Cookie

Don’t Stop!!! But I totally understand you may have other things you want to get your teeth into, I just wanted to send an email to say how good it is and I’ll miss it — Ariadne

While the number of names my masthead remained small—just one, really, besides two tepid attempts at providing an internship opportunity— I want to thank the dozens of you who were my best co-curators and, equally as important, my best cheerleaders. There are too many to list here and you certainly know who you are. THANK YOU.

So there you have it. We’re hitting send on this one last issue.

I will say it one more time: Sorry for the typos.

No, what I want to say for the last time is that if you have a story you think I should see. Or you just want to know what I’m watching. Or what my opinion is on something, email me at LZSundayPaper@gmail.com.

Sadly, I can’t sign off with “See you next Sunday.” As (vaguely) promised, I am going to figure out how to maintain some version of this missive on Instagram.

So if you don’t already,

(I promise I will try to clean up the feed it will be less of an ugly mishmash.)

I hope you all think of me on Sunday mornings, from time to time.

Long live my LZSP archive and cheers and good luck to all of you!!

It’s been a great run,

LZ