Introducing Sidechannel, for Zero Day Subscribers

Here’s the tea. If you haven’t heard, next Monday seven other independent writers and I will be launching a new Discord channel called Sidechannel for paid subcribers of our publications. New York Times media columnist Ben Smith was first to report about it last Sunday.

If you’re a paid subscriber to Zero Day, or to any of the seven other publications owned by my fellow writers on the channel, you’ll receive an invitation some time this week to join us at Sidechannel.

And if you’re not currently a paid subscriber, please consider upgrading to take advantage of this benefit that we’ve created for you.

Sidechannel will be a great way for subscribers to engage in deep or light discussions about the latest topics in cybersecurity and national security. But you will also be able to surf any of the other channels operated by my fellow writers (see a list below for all of them, along with a description of their publications). And we’ll have lounge rooms set up where everyone can congregate, to cross-pollinate discussions about the latest media scandals, tech policy, disinformation, platform policing, internet culture and other topics, among people with varied interests and backgrounds.

I’ll be running five chatrooms in my section of Sidechannel, focused on: cyber policy, espionage and cyber warfare, election security, cybercrime, and the latest Zero Day story I publish here. We also plan to host live audio chats (using a Discord feature that resembles Clubhouse) with our favorite book authors, subject-matter experts and other newsmakers. We’re already lining up some great surprise guests for this, so stay tuned.

We’ll eventually add more independent writers to Sidechannel, but for now here are the other fantastic writers and publications that will be featured. Please consider subscribing to their publications as well. Casey Newton, an awesome reporter, formerly of The Verge, who consistently breaks news about Facebook and other major tech players, wrote more about what we have planned for Sidechannel on his  Platformer publication.

Below is a list and description of the other writers you will be able to see on Sidechannel (most of which I cribbed from Casey’s writeup about the group, except for the description about Casey). We hope to see you on Sidechannel.

Kim

Casey Newton (tech, democracy and the big platforms). After seven years covering the world’s most powerful tech companies at The Verge, Casey made the leap to independence last year to found Platformer, a wildly successful publication that breaks serious news and has the eyes of Silicon Valley leaders focused on it.

Anne Helen Petersen (culture and remote work). A longtime BuzzFeed reporter who left last year to found Culture Study,  Petersen is a wide-ranging writer who is also one of our sharpest observers about the fast-changing intersection between work and life.

Eric Newcomer (startups and venture capital).  A Bloomberg defector as of last year, Newcomer has been lighting up  Silicon Valley lately with deeply reported, stylishly written updates  about big money players in the tech industry.

• Nick Quah (podcasts and audio). Casey calls him the Podfather; Quah started Hot Pod before paid newsletters were cool and his publication is the industry standard.
• Delia Cai (media).  The media is self-obsessed, if you haven’t noticed from all the  Substack coverage lately; Cai’s bloggy chronicles of an industry in  perpetual transition have become must-reads for me and thousands of  others.
• Ryan Broderick (internet culture). Broderick writes Garbage Day, a transcendent newsletter about the internet’s strangest corners, and he’ll be bringing the best of it to Sidechannel.
• Charlie Warzel (the attention economy).  The newest arrival to the independent reporting life, Warzel just left the New York Times to launch his new Substack publication. He’s one of our most thoughtful interpreters of what the internet is doing to our politics and to ourselves.