Rethinking the News Burst (Feedback Wanted!) (Patreon)

Hey All,

I wanted to gauge your feelings on a change I've been thinking about making for a little while, now. The change in question? Making the News Burst one very robust post a week, as opposed to the two smaller posts it stands at now.

The reasons for this proposed change are twofold: Firstly, traffic on News Bursts indicates there's no reason to do so many of them, and secondly, I'm trying to make a more concise schedule for myself, and for the rollout of extraneous non-video content. All of this will hopefully combine to make Patreon an even more thoughtful place, with posts that catch your eye, and content you want to interact with and digest.

To go further into these points: Traffic on News Bursts is low overall, and has been for the duration of CLS' brief life. I know (for a fact, actually) that many people read the Bursts in their e-mail, and that traffic wouldn't be reflected here on Patreon. But I also know that interaction is generally low, and I'd like to try to lift it.

To that end, what I'd like to do is to make News Bursts a weekly post -- I'm thinking on Wednesdays -- that chronicle the five biggest stories of the past week (as opposed to the three biggest stories of the last few days). Each story will come with robust write-ups (as I'm doing now), as well as extraneous links (also as I'm doing now). So, basically, it's what you'd find now, but once a week instead of two, five stories instead of three, and ordered in some sort of importance instead of more chaotically. A power ranking, as it were.

My hope is, that by making this change, News Bursts become more of an event, and less of a drive-by happenstance. My primary goal with everything here on Patreon is to make extra, premium-style content you can rely upon. With the MP3 version of the show, Q&A videos, topic elections, postcards, thank you videos, and Skype calls, I feel like I'm doing that. With News Bursts, I feel like I could be doing more. And, in this case, more might actually be less. Or, more accurately, more predictably-posted, weekly reading.

With so many people at the $5/month level for various reasons -- whether that reason is the News Burst, or the MP3, or to simply show such generous support for a show you like -- it's hard to tell what's up and down. Ultimately, that'll be up to all of you.

No changes are forthcoming without your feedback. So please do leave it! And, as always, thank you for your support. I'm gonna get back to tomorrow's video, now, which covers a topic a ton of you have requested I cover. 'Til tomorrow! -Colin