Texas Newsletters
Guest Speakers
Newsletter Basics
This Semester
The Headlines
100

This Austin-based newsletter is known for its concise, bullet-pointed stories.

What is Axios Austin?

100

This guest speaker co-writes the Axios Austin newsletter with Nicole.

Who is Asher Price

100

This opening sentence or paragraph of a story is designed to hook the reader.

What is a lede?

100

This assignment asked you to write a full newsletter on Substack.

What is the newsletter project?

100

This rapidly growing technology dominated headlines and raised questions about journalism, writing, and misinformation.

What is artificial intelligence?

200

This type of platform (used by many independent writers) lets journalists publish and monetize newsletters directly.

What is Substack

200

This guest speaker cried during class!

Who is Chris Cobler / Nicole’s dad?

200

This section toward the top of a story provides context and explains the core of the story.

What is “Why it matters” / Nutgraf?

200

Your classmates have received comments on their Substack from these two (very different) types of people.

Who is moms and trolls/hate comments

200

This tech founder and his wife have given more than $1 billion to UT as of Tuesday.

Who is Michael and Susan Dell?

300

This Austin newsletter from City Cast is written by  reporter Kelsey Bradshaw.

What is Hey Austin

300

This guest speaker oversees Texas Monthly’s newsletter suite.

Who is Amanda O’Donnell?

300

This newsletter metric measures how many people open your email.

What is an open rate?

300

This style of writing (created by Axios) emphasizes short, scannable content.

What is Smart Brevity?

300

This Supreme Court Justice gave a lecture at UT this week.

Who is Clarence Thomas?

400

This newsletter by the Texas Tribune delivers free political and policy news every weekday.

What is The Brief?

400

This guest speaker DJs around Austin and publishes a music newsletter on Substack.

Who is Jacqui Devaney?

400

This famous journalism technique puts the most important information first.

What is the inverted pyramid?

400

This revenue model charges readers a monthly or annual fee for exclusive content.

What are paid memberships / subscriptions?

400

Darby's latest story in Axios Austin focused on this craft.

What is needlepoint?

500

This weekly newsletter from Texas Monthly gives readers recommendations for what to do every weekend.

What is What To Do This Weekend?

500

This guest speaker writes a daily Austin newsletter for  City Cast.

Who is Kelsey Bradshaw?

500

This metric tracks how many readers click on links inside your newsletter.

What is a click-through rate?

500

Nicole required you to use this tool to get readers to respond directly to you.

What is call to action/audience engagement?

500
The Daily Texan recently got a sit-down interview with this UT official.

Who is Jim Davis? (Or Who is UT's president)