In a time when the headlines are dominated by wars and a divisive presidential campaign, the magazine-world rivalry between The Atlantic and The New Yorker doesn’t amount to much.
So you might have missed it when, on April 2, The Atlantic beat The New Yorker in three big categories at the 2024 National Magazine Awards.
But to Rusty Foster, who chronicles the media industry and internet culture in his daily newsletter, Today in Tabs, The Atlantic’s victory was big news.
Shortly after the awards ceremony, which took place at Terminal 5 in Manhattan, Mr. Foster tapped out a fanciful report for his audience of media obsessives. Under the headline “Shutout at the TK Corral,” he wrote that David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, “solemnly folded up and ate each of his prepared speeches as he watched The Atlantic win every category.”
Mr. Foster then turned his attention to Anna Wintour, the editorial director of Condé Nast, the publishing giant that owns The New Yorker, Vogue and other publications, writing that she “donned an emergency second pair of sunglasses” in reaction to the company’s poor showing.
A surprising thing about Today in Tabs — which has a knowing, satirical tone that has made it an enduring hit among media insiders — is that Mr. Foster writes it from the bucolic setting of Peaks Island, Maine, which is where he was when the National Magazines Awards ceremony took place.
He says he finds New York’s nonstop noise and crowds tiring, and his most recent visit to the city was last May, when he and the youngest of his three children stayed at a Times Square hotel and saw “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” on Broadway.
One of his friends, Paul Ford, a writer, editor and tech entrepreneur, noted that Mr. Foster, the person, seems to have little in common with the media chronicler of Today in Tabs. “He’s a very New England guy,” Mr. Ford said. “When you meet this guy, if he told you he’s going to make a wooden canoe, you’d go, ‘Alright.’”
A Peaks Islander
Mr. Foster, 47, started Today in Tabs in 2013, when the industry he covers with a mix of affection and scorn was going through a crisis brought on, in part, by the rise of digital technology.
The news media business is in even worse shape now. The Los Angeles Times recently announced that it would slash its newsroom by more than 20 percent, Sports Illustrated has been gutted, and more than 400 union staffers at Condé Nast walked off the job this year after the company announced it planned a layoff. Vice, a onetime colossus of digital media, has filed for bankruptcy; and Gawker and The Awl, a pair of online publications that had an influence on Today in Tabs, are gone.
Amid the economic gloom, Mr. Foster has what many media outlets crave: a devoted readership willing to pay for content.
Around 10 percent of his 36,000 subscribers are paying readers, he said, who fork over $6 per month or $50 per year. That’s not quite three-bedrooms-in-Cobble-Hill money, but it allows Mr. Foster to make a living in media at a time when many veteranjournalists are struggling to find jobs.
From the start, he has written Today in Tabs from Peaks Island, a nearly one-square-mile patch of rocky land in Casco Bay. Reachable only by ferryboat, it has roughly 900 full-time residents. Aside from a few homey dining establishments (including Milly’s Seaside Skillet Kitchen and the Cockeyed Gull Restaurant) and a basic supermarket, there’s not much commerce to speak of.
The locals have an independent character. Many live in weather-beaten cottages and drive junker cars that don’t require a state inspection sticker if kept on-island. Since the 1880s, Peaks Islanders have mounted six unsuccessful campaigns to secede from Portland, which is three miles away and governs the island.
On a cool, breezy morning, Mr. Foster led me from the ferry to his 2001 Chevy Suburban, which he had converted to an “overlander” vehicle to take his family on road trips to Yellowstone National Park and other sites. The interior had built-in beds. The roof held two elongated water storage tanks.
He didn’t say much during the short drive. The pavement gave way to a dirt road, and he came to a stop in front of a modest two-story fixer-upper built in the early 1900s.
In the back yard, Mr. Foster’s island car, a Jeep Liberty, was up on jacks. Nearby was a chicken coop he had built for the flock of laying hens his family kept when the kids were little.
Inside, he sat at the kitchen table and unwrapped a croissant that I had brought along from Portland. As his Rhodesian Ridgeback, Sam, shuffled underfoot for crumbs, he spoke in quiet tones about growing up in Massachusetts and spending happy childhood summers on Peaks Island, where his grandparents had a cottage.
At the College of William & Mary, in Williamsburg, Va., he was all set to major in film studies, only to drop out during his senior year. While there, he met Christina Fischer, a history major. They married and moved to San Francisco in 2000. Mr. Foster worked as a programmer for an internet startup in the waning days of the dot-com bubble, but he didn’t care for the city or the tech scene, and the couple made the move to Peaks Island in 2001.
“A lot of things happened in a very short period of time — and then we moved here, and nothing happened,” Mr. Foster said with a laugh.
He recalled his first brush with the internet in the late 1980s, when his father, who worked as a franchise developer for Dunkin’ Donuts, signed up for CompuServe, one of the first online services. Mr. Foster learned to type on its chat function, CB Simulator. For a self-described shy, nerdy teenager, the ability to meet people online was revelatory.
“What I discovered was that writing is the easiest way for me to talk to people,” he said. “And it’s the way I feel the most that I’m expressing myself.”
Mr. Foster is something of a Zelig-like figure in internet history, popping up in key roles at various stages in the web’s development. He was an influencer long before that was even a thing. A group blog he created in 1999, Kuro5hin (motto: “Technology and Culture, from the Trenches”), was one of the first sites that allowed users to post comments and create their own blog pages.
Kuro5hin became a gathering place for early adopters and — along with Slashdot and Wikipedia — helped shape the open-source culture of the early internet. Mr. Foster, then known as “Rusty from Kuro5hin,” made plenty of friends online as he built a career as a freelance programmer.
He was an early shareholder in Sports Blog Nation, the precursor to Vox Media. In 2013, he was hired by Stephen Colbert and the comedy writer Rob Dubbin to help develop Scripto, a scriptwriting software used by “The Colbert Report” and “The Daily Show.” Now and then, those jobs took him to New York. But even in his coding days, Mr. Foster found that he got along better with journalists than tech people.
“There aren’t a lot of tech leaders that I find interesting,” he said in his kitchen. “I’m a language person. Media people come from words. I like their approach to the world. They have skeptical curiosity.”
He started Today in Tabs almost on a whim, thanks to the encouragement of Caitlin Kelly, who was then a senior web producer for The New Yorker. (The newsletter’s keyword, “tabs,” is internet shorthand for browser windows as well as slang for the latest articles and memes that people were getting worked up about online.) Mr. Foster laid out the Today in Tabs origin story in a 2021 edition of his newsletter.
“One day in 2013, underemployed and wasting time on Twitter, I tweeted ‘Today in Tabs,’” he wrote. In reply, Ms. Kelly tweeted, “wait is this a e-newsletter I can subscribe to?”
Mr. Foster continued: “‘A e-newsletter?’ I thought, in the amusing old-timey patois of 2013, ‘Why ever not?’ So that afternoon I sent the first Today in Tabs to 25 subscribers, beginning with this NY Post story about love and misogyny and sandwiches.”
Soon enough, he was tracking “the insidery squabbles and hate reads and high-minded-if-fleeting-feuds” in the media world, as The New York Observer put it in a 2014 profile. Today in Tabs quickly became a favorite of the web-savvy journalists who worked at Buzzfeed, Vox and other digital outlets.
Mr. Foster shut it down in 2016 because his job at Scripto demanded too much of his time. By 2021, he was back up and posting, first on Substack and then on the publishing platform Beehiiv. Restarting Today in Tabs, he said, was his attempt to leave programming behind and make a living as a writer.
Though he has written for The New Yorker, The Awl and other publications, Mr. Foster has never held a staff position as a journalist. And although he now makes his living tracking the media, he said he still thought of it as a hobby — “and it’s a weird hobby to have.”
Some people golf or sport-fish. Mr. Foster likes immersing himself in burn reviews of the new essay collection by LaurenOyler and going down the rabbit holes of the Kate Middleton saga. In other words, putting together a newsletter about the media and online life comes naturally to him.
“It’s not a job so much as a thing my brain does,” he said. “If I read a certain amount of content every day, then my brain will produce 800 words about it. As long as I can sit and write that down, I’m good.”
Deadline Days
Unlike other industry newsletters, Today in Tabs, which is published four or five days a week, does not deliver scoops or exclusive interviews with boldface names. Billed as “your favorite newsletter’s favorite newsletter,” it is an 800-word snapshot of what people (mostly journalists) are talking about in the moment.
What readers are really paying for is Mr. Foster’s sensibility.
He writes in a cynical but still bright-eyed, quirkily punctuated, jokey style — internet voice — that will be recognizable to anyone who remembers Gawker, The Awl or, further back, Suck.com.
Matt Levine, an opinion columnist for Bloomberg, called Mr. Foster “a tremendous stylist,” adding that Today in Tabs was an inspiration for his own newsletter, Money Stuff. “I’m on the internet all day, on Twitter all day, and it’s this shared psychosis,” Mr. Levine said. “Rusty captures the nonsense of the day but in a stylistic way that makes it seem like literature.”
Elizabeth Lopatto, a senior writer for the Verge, says Mr. Foster’s appeal lies in his geographic and psychic remove from what he writes about. “As much as I love media reporters, there’s something to be said for that outside perspective,” Ms. Lopatto said.
“People read to have fun,” she added. “I get the sense that Rusty is writing that newsletter trying to make himself laugh.”
Though a creature of the internet, Mr. Foster is not unlike an old-school newspaper reporter in his adherence to a daily deadline.
Mr. Foster’s wife works as a data systems specialist for the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence, a nonprofit, working from home or in Augusta. His three children, Mica, 19, Calvin, 16, and Ash, 11, are all in school. That leaves him padding around the house for much of the day.
He gets up around 8 a.m. and moseys down to the kitchen to make coffee. He takes a mug upstairs and gets back in bed, where he sits with his laptop, catching up on what’s happening online. If something piques his interest, he bookmarks it in a file.
“That’s my notebook,” Mr. Foster said. “It’s really just a list of links. And hopefully I remember why I bookmarked it.”
He checks in with a Slack channel that includes reporter friends who give him a sense of what journalists are talking about. A group of Today in Tabs enthusiasts on the social media platform Discord drop off more links — in effect, they are Mr. Foster’s volunteer stringers.
He makes lunch and takes Sam for a walk down the dirt road. He aims to start writing by 1 p.m. and to post by 4 or 5. If he hasn’t gotten going in earnest by 3, panic sets in.
He writes at a small desk in his bedroom. On the wall is a plaque he had made that says: “Rusty Foster, Weird Media Gremlin.”
Tabs is structured like a late-night talk show, starting with a monologue that allows Mr. Foster to riff on a trending topic at length. One day in February, his opening subject was the financier Bill Ackman, whose public fight against his alma mater, Harvard, had made him the subject of several articles, a phenomenon Mr. Foster dubbed “the Ackmanaissance.” Mr. Foster wrote that a Washington Post profile of Mr. Ackman made him seem like “an overconfident dimwit”; from there, he dove into a New York magazine piece on the man to come up with “the eight best New York Magazine roasts of Bill Ackman that he won’t understand.”
The Today in Tabs opener is followed by a middle section of rapid-fire links to articles and news items, many of them written in insidery lingo. Here, Mr. Foster might also reveal his pet causes and pet peeves (One hyperlink reads: “Molly White On Chris Dixon’s Dumb Crypto Book”). Each installment of the newsletter ends with a musical guest — or, rather, an embedded song video, usually by an indie band.
His fellow Peaks Islanders have little idea what he does for a living or that in certain circles he is known as “Rusty from Tabs.” He has not been profiled in The Portland Press Herald or The Peaks Island News. He tells people who ask that he’s a writer. When they ask him what he writes about, he struggles to explain what it is that a weird media gremlin does.
“I usually tell them, ‘I make jokes about the news,’” he said.
For someone who has been online 35 years, Mr. Foster retains a remarkable ability to disconnect from the machine. He’s an engaged parent, as well as an avid kayaker and hiker. He also belongs to a wilderness search-and-rescue team that does summer shifts in Baxter State Park, in northern Maine. On weekends, he mostly stays off the internet.
“I compartmentalize a lot,” he said. “I try to be doing the thing that I’m doing when I’m doing it.”
His readers will soon have to match his ability to manage an online obsession. Starting July 2, Mr. Foster is taking a break from Today in Tabs to hike the Appalachian Trail with his oldest child, who is set to graduate from college in May and move overseas in the fall.
In addition to a good pair of trail runners and a waterproof tent, Mr. Foster plans to pack a six-ounce folding keyboard and his smartphone for the 2,200-mile journey. As he has already informed his subscribers, he will start a new newsletter called Today on Trail. More than 2,000 people have signed up to pay Mr. Foster a to-be-determined fee for his “chronicle of what happens in my brain on a five-month hike.”
As he spoke further of his planned hiatus from Today in Tabs, he considered what it would be like to spend several months without a Wi-Fi signal, a prospect that might strike terror, and perhaps a bit of envy, into his readers.
“I was like, What if I got offline a little bit to see what’s in my own head?” Mr. Foster said. “It’s been about three and a half years of doing Tabs consistently. I wonder if there’s something else for me to discover that I could write, if I were not constantly living in that information-soaked environment.”
Sutherland House Experts is Empowering Quiet Experts through Compelling Nonfiction in a Changing Ideas Landscape
TORONTO, ON — Almost one year after its launch, Sutherland House Experts is reshaping the publishing industry with its innovative co-publishing model for “quiet experts.” This approach, where expert authors share both costs and profits with the publisher, is bridging the gap between expertise and public discourse. Helping to drive this transformation is Neil Seeman, a renowned author, educator, and entrepreneur.
“The book publishing world is evolving rapidly,” publisher Neil Seeman explains. “There’s a growing hunger for expert voices in public dialogue, but traditional channels often fall short. Sutherland House Experts provides a platform for ‘quiet experts’ to share their knowledge with the broader book-reading audience.”
The company’s roster boasts respected thought leaders whose books are already gaining major traction:
• V. Kumar Murty, a world-renowned mathematician, and past Fields Institute director, just published “The Science of Human Possibilities” under the new press. The book has been declared a 2024 “must-read” by The Next Big Ideas Club and is receiving widespread media attention across North America.
• Eldon Sprickerhoff, co-founder of cybersecurity firm eSentire, is seeing strong pre-orders for his upcoming book, “Committed: Startup Survival Tips and Uncommon Sense for First-Time Tech Founders.”
• Dr. Tony Sanfilippo, a respected cardiologist and professor of medicine at Queen’s University, is generating significant media interest with his forthcoming book, “The Doctors We Need: Imagining a New Path for Physician Recruitment, Training, and Support.”
Seeman, whose recent and acclaimed book, “Accelerated Minds,” explores the entrepreneurial mindset, brings a unique perspective to publishing. His experience as a Senior Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, and academic affiliations with The Fields Institute and Massey College, give him deep insight into the challenges faced by people he calls “quiet experts.”
“Our goal is to empower quiet, expert authors to become entrepreneurs of actionable ideas the world needs to hear,” Seeman states. “We are blending scholarly insight with market savvy to create accessible, impactful narratives for a global readership. Quiet experts are people with decades of experience in one or more fields who seek to translate their insights into compelling non-fiction for the world,” says Seeman.
This fall, Seeman is taking his insights to the classroom. He will teach the new course, “The Writer as Entrepreneur,” at the University of Toronto, offering aspiring authors practical tools to navigate the evolving book publishing landscape. To enroll in this new weekly night course starting Tuesday, October 1st, visit: https://learn.utoronto.ca/programs-courses/courses/4121-writer-entrepreneur
“The entrepreneurial ideas industry is changing rapidly,” Seeman notes. “Authors need new skills to thrive in this dynamic environment. My course and our publishing model provide those tools.”
About Neil Seeman: Neil Seeman is co-founder and publisher of Sutherland House Experts, an author, educator, entrepreneur, and mental health advocate. He holds appointments at the University of Toronto, The Fields Institute, and Massey College. His work spans entrepreneurship, public health, and innovative publishing models.
Hallmark launching a streaming service with two new original series, and Bill Skarsgård out for revenge in “Boy Kills World” are some of the new television, films, music and games headed to a device near you.
Also among the streaming offerings worth your time as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists: Alex Garland’s “Civil War” starring Kirsten Dunst, Natasha Rothwell’s heartfelt comedy for Hulu called “How to Die Alone” and Sylvester Stallone’s second season of “Tulsa King” debuts.
NEW MOVIES TO STREAM SEPT. 9-15
— Alex Garland’s “Civil War” is finally making its debut on MAX on Friday. The film stars Kirsten Dunst as a veteran photojournalist covering a violent war that’s divided America; She reluctantly allows an aspiring photographer, played by Cailee Spaeny, to tag along as she, an editor (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and a reporter (Wagner Moura) make the dangerous journey to Washington, D.C., to interview the president (Nick Offerman), a blustery, rising despot who has given himself a third term, taken to attacking his citizens and shut himself off from the press. In my review, I called it a bellowing and haunting experience; Smart and thought-provoking with great performances. It’s well worth a watch.
— Joey King stars in Netflix’s adaptation of Scott Westerfeld’s “Uglies,” about a future society in which everyone is required to have beautifying cosmetic surgery at age 16. Streaming on Friday, McG directed the film, in which King’s character inadvertently finds herself in the midst of an uprising against the status quo. “Outer Banks” star Chase Stokes plays King’s best friend.
— Bill Skarsgård is out for revenge against the woman (Famke Janssen) who killed his family in “Boy Kills World,” coming to Hulu on Friday. Moritz Mohr directed the ultra-violent film, of which Variety critic Owen Gleiberman wrote: “It’s a depraved vision, yet I got caught up in its kick-ass revenge-horror pizzazz, its disreputable commitment to what it was doing.”
— The year was 2006. Snow Patrol, the Northern Irish-Scottish alternative rock band, released an album, “Eyes Open,” producing the biggest hit of their career: “Chasing Cars.” A lot has happened in the time since — three, soon to be four quality full-length albums, to be exact. On Friday, the band will release “The Forest Is the Path,” their first new album in seven years. Anthemic pop-rock is the name of the game across songs of love and loss, like “All,”“The Beginning” and “This Is the Sound Of Your Voice.”
— For fans of raucous guitar music, Jordan Peele’s 2022 sci-fi thriller, “NOPE,” provided a surprising, if tiny, thrill. One of the leads, Emerald “Em” Haywood portrayed by Keke Palmer, rocks a Jesus Lizard shirt. (Also featured through the film: Rage Against the Machine, Wipers, Mr Bungle, Butthole Surfers and Earth band shirts.) The Austin noise rock band are a less than obvious pick, having been signed to the legendary Touch and Go Records and having stopped releasing new albums in 1998. That changes on Friday the 13th, when “Rack” arrives. And for those curious: The Jesus Lizard’s intensity never went away.
— Hallmark launched a streaming service called Hallmark+ on Tuesday with two new original series, the scripted drama “The Chicken Sisters” and unscripted series “Celebrations with Lacey Chabert.” If you’re a Hallmark holiday movies fan, you know Chabert. She’s starred in more than 30 of their films and many are holiday themed. Off camera, Chabert has a passion for throwing parties and entertaining. In “Celebrations,” deserving people are surprised with a bash in their honor — planned with Chabert’s help. “The Chicken Sisters” stars Schuyler Fisk, Wendie Malick and Lea Thompson in a show about employees at rival chicken restaurants in a small town. The eight-episode series is based on a novel of the same name.
— Natasha Rothwell of “Insecure” and “The White Lotus” fame created and stars in a new heartfelt comedy for Hulu called “How to Die Alone.” She plays Mel, a broke, go-along-to-get-along, single, airport employee who, after a near-death experience, makes the conscious decision to take risks and pursue her dreams. Rothwell has been working on the series for the past eight years and described it to The AP as “the most vulnerable piece of art I’ve ever put into the world.” Like Mel, Rothwell had to learn to bet on herself to make the show she wanted to make. “In the Venn diagram of me and Mel, there’s significant overlap,” said Rothwell. It premieres Friday on Hulu.
— Shailene Woodley, DeWanda Wise and Betty Gilpin star in a new drama for Starz called “Three Women,” about entrepreneur Sloane, homemaker Lina and student Maggie who are each stepping into their power and making life-changing decisions. They’re interviewed by a writer named Gia (Woodley.) The series is based on a 2019 best-selling book of the same name by Lisa Taddeo. “Three Women” premieres Friday on Starz.
— Sylvester Stallone’s second season of “Tulsa King” debuts Sunday on Paramount+. Stallone plays Dwight Manfredi, a mafia boss who was recently released from prison after serving 25 years. He’s sent to Tulsa to set up a new crime syndicate. The series is created by Taylor Sheridan of “Yellowstone” fame.
— One thing about the title of Focus Entertainment’s Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 — you know exactly what you’re in for. You are Demetrian Titus, a genetically enhanced brute sent into battle against the Tyranids, an insectoid species with an insatiable craving for human flesh. You have a rocket-powered suit of armor and an arsenal of ridiculous weapons like the “Chainsword,” the “Thunderhammer” and the “Melta Rifle,” so what could go wrong? Besides the squishy single-player mode, there are cooperative missions and six-vs.-six free-for-alls. You can suit up now on PlayStation 5, Xbox X/S or PC.
— Likewise, Wild Bastards isn’t exactly the kind of title that’s going to attract fans of, say, Animal Crossing. It’s another sci-fi shooter, but the protagonists are a gang of 13 varmints — aliens and androids included — who are on the run from the law. Each outlaw has a distinctive set of weapons and special powers: Sarge, for example, is a robot with horse genes, while Billy the Squid is … well, you get the idea. Australian studio Blue Manchu developed the 2019 cult hit Void Bastards, and this Wild-West-in-space spinoff has the same snarky humor and vibrant, neon-drenched cartoon look. Saddle up on PlayStation 5, Xbox X/S, Nintendo Switch or PC.
Former President Donald Trump is on the brink of a significant financial decision that could have far-reaching implications for both his personal wealth and the future of his fledgling social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG). As the lockup period on his shares in TMTG, which owns Truth Social, nears its end, Trump could soon be free to sell his substantial stake in the company. However, the potential payday, which makes up a large portion of his net worth, comes with considerable risks for Trump and his supporters.
Trump’s stake in TMTG comprises nearly 59% of the company, amounting to 114,750,000 shares. As of now, this holding is valued at approximately $2.6 billion. These shares are currently under a lockup agreement, a common feature of initial public offerings (IPOs), designed to prevent company insiders from immediately selling their shares and potentially destabilizing the stock. The lockup, which began after TMTG’s merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), is set to expire on September 25, though it could end earlier if certain conditions are met.
Should Trump decide to sell his shares after the lockup expires, the market could respond in unpredictable ways. The sale of a substantial number of shares by a major stakeholder like Trump could flood the market, potentially driving down the stock price. Daniel Bradley, a finance professor at the University of South Florida, suggests that the market might react negatively to such a large sale, particularly if there aren’t enough buyers to absorb the supply. This could lead to a sharp decline in the stock’s value, impacting both Trump’s personal wealth and the company’s market standing.
Moreover, Trump’s involvement in Truth Social has been a key driver of investor interest. The platform, marketed as a free speech alternative to mainstream social media, has attracted a loyal user base largely due to Trump’s presence. If Trump were to sell his stake, it might signal a lack of confidence in the company, potentially shaking investor confidence and further depressing the stock price.
Trump’s decision is also influenced by his ongoing legal battles, which have already cost him over $100 million in legal fees. Selling his shares could provide a significant financial boost, helping him cover these mounting expenses. However, this move could also have political ramifications, especially as he continues his bid for the Republican nomination in the 2024 presidential race.
Trump Media’s success is closely tied to Trump’s political fortunes. The company’s stock has shown volatility in response to developments in the presidential race, with Trump’s chances of winning having a direct impact on the stock’s value. If Trump sells his stake, it could be interpreted as a lack of confidence in his own political future, potentially undermining both his campaign and the company’s prospects.
Truth Social, the flagship product of TMTG, has faced challenges in generating traffic and advertising revenue, especially compared to established social media giants like X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook. Despite this, the company’s valuation has remained high, fueled by investor speculation on Trump’s political future. If Trump remains in the race and manages to secure the presidency, the value of his shares could increase. Conversely, any missteps on the campaign trail could have the opposite effect, further destabilizing the stock.
As the lockup period comes to an end, Trump faces a critical decision that could shape the future of both his personal finances and Truth Social. Whether he chooses to hold onto his shares or cash out, the outcome will likely have significant consequences for the company, its investors, and Trump’s political aspirations.
