Dispatch #8

The best part about teaching Publishing in Public is when guest speakers come. Two sessions ago, we hosted the writer Delia Cai, who, among many things, is author of the popular Deez Links newsletter.

Deez Links playfully distills culture and media news, and has been around for ten years. Delia was an early adopter of Substack, though this newsletter started on TinyLetter. I invited her because this newsletter is both entertaining and expansive. She’s independently maintained it for years, turned it into events like “Hate Read,” and the writing is really good — there is a clear “voice!”

As we discovered, there is a lot of effort to having a visible creative presence, and Delia’s advice (delivered partially as a bulleted list aptly called EVERYTHING I HAVE LEARNED ABOUT MEDIA SO FAR) felt accessible.

In the “peak millennial” years, Delia worked at Buzzfeed while also writing her newsletter daily. Getting into people’s inboxes regularly was a huge opportunity, she shared, along with being super online, working with people she liked, and running Q&As. One of her points is that working in media is “mostly an endurance sport” with the rest being about proximity.

Our class appreciated how candid Delia was about using social platforms to forge a path in NYC media. At the time, Twitter helped surface relevant writers and helped her see that the industry was “not that big of a cafeteria.” It helped her connect with peers and participate in local events. Though she said that if she was just getting into the game today she’d probably try the IG reels or TikTok route.

While some of our previous class discussions critiqued Substack’s ecosystem for grouping writers into types, Delia appreciated that Substack lets you jump in and start writing within a minute. There is something to be said about being able to do the work you want and distribute it quickly.

As her first bullet point mentions, it’s important to give yourself an outlet to do the kind of creative work on your own rather than waiting for someone to give it to you. “This is how you will have fun no matter what.”

She said that because of this, she tends not to look at some of the data Substack provides, preferring instead to keep her eyes on her own work. It's a strong reflection in any creative field; at the end of the day you have to feel confident in what you’re offering and keep going.

When asked what unified her body of work, Delia said she approaches things less as a traditional reporter and more like someone talking through what media feels like emotionally. It seems that because of her voice, people trust her to recommend things they may not care about otherwise, pulling tangential things together into one story.

I mentioned that I felt that way when she recommended Hoppers, a Pixar movie about a beaver, in a recent Deez Links. Her impact lingered, as several laptops had “Hoppers” loaded up on Google after she left.