I like Substack’s emphasis on letters between publications: a way to have an in-depth conversation between two bloggers who have a different point of view on a different topic. It reminds me a little of CJR’s Galley site, which hosted some interesting conversations.
But of course, you don’t need Substack or to be in CJR’s circle to create a conversation in this way. All you need is to have a counterpart writer, a blog or a newsletter each, and a willingness to correspond over thoughtful, long-form posts on a single topic for around three posts each.
If you want to get technical, you can even use microformats u-in-reply-to syntax and webmentions to conversationally glue the blog posts together. But the most important thing is to write and explore an idea.
It’s a lovely way to dive deep into a contentious topic, and I’d love to see more of it.
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