The Scumbler goes big
It's time.
Today’s newsletter is a very special edition of The Scumbler. It’s an administrative email, but it’s also a personal email. After nearly two years of publishing on Substack — sporadically at first, then a couple times a month, and now weekly — I’ve officially turned on paid subscriptions.
If you read no further, what you need to know is that continuing at the free tier will get you two posts a month. They will be great, and they’ll be heavily weighted toward interviews with interesting creative people. For $5 a month — or, as they say, the price of a cup of coffee — you will receive an additional two posts each month. These will likely include more cartoons, recommendations, and personal essays, giving you a behind-the-scenes view into the things that I’m thinking about. (Stay tuned for an essay about the funny experience of reading Nora Ephron, my idol, while living in the city she famously loathed: D.C.!)
That mix isn’t set in stone, because a newsletter is a living thing, but it’s how I’m thinking about things at the outset. I’ve had so much fun publishing this newsletter, and whether or not you opt for a paid subscription today, tomorrow, or never, I’m thrilled to have you along for the ride.
Here’s a little more backstory on my decision to add a paid tier.
I’ve spent the last 12+ years working as a culture journalist, a job that has allowed me to write all kinds of great stories, including profiles of people like Robert Eggers, Caroline Polachek, Dax Shepard, and Molly Gordon. I feel incredibly lucky to be in this line of work, but, as you may have heard, the media business model has fallen apart. Editors’ budgets are incredibly tight, and rates have not gone up since I went freelance nearly seven years ago. It’s increasingly difficult to land pitches, and, in my experience, it’s just as hard to get paid your worth. I don’t blame editors for this — I love the people I work with, and I know that, 99% of the time, they’re trying to do right by their writers.
Because freelance journalism doesn’t pay very well, I personally do a lot of writing for brands and corporate clients. I draft vibey brand manifestos, ad copy, press releases, and newsroom features; I copy edit big corporate reports, draft newsletters, and pull together competitive research. (If you’re a comms or marketing leader who needs a writer for any upcoming projects, hit me up!) As it turns out, I really like this work, which uses my skills in new ways and has expanded my understanding of myself as a writer.
Sometime last summer, though, I realized that my journalism muscles weren’t getting enough exercise. In addition to my copywriting work, I was still reporting some features that excited me, but those stories were few and far between. (See above: not enough money, hard to land.) So I started getting serious about Substack, where many of my fellow reporters had already migrated in an effort to take charge of their professional destinies in an industry pummeled by near-constant layoffs and poor rates. With my newsletter, I figured, I could publish all sorts of weird and interesting interviews and essays, at a cadence of my choosing. I set myself a goal of turning on paid subscriptions in June 2025, in the hope that this self-published project would, over time, materially contribute to my writing income.
Whether or not The Scumbler ultimately earns me gobs of money, though, creating an outlet to sharpen my voice has been a very good thing.
I’ve published interviews with the kinds of people that I want to read about: 30 Rock and SNL costume designer Tom Broecker, the wonderful and weird New Yorker cartoonist Will McPhail, Laufey’s creative director (and twin sister) Junia Lin, the cult clothing designer and fine artist Mona Kowalska, Alex Mill creative director Somsack Sikhounmuong, and Jo Radford, co-owner of the Michelin-starred restaurant Timberyard.
In a bid to get to know my new-ish home better, I started a series called “The Most Interesting Person in D.C.,” where I feature cool people in a city that’s underrated for its creativity. (Meet Eric Moorer, Nancy Pearlstein, Claude Lubroth Reilly, and Ana-Maria Jaramillo and Gus May!)
I’ve also gotten to share more of myself in my writing, through cartoons, personal essays, and some rather niche recommendations lists.
Sometimes I worry that The Scumbler’s mission statement isn’t obvious to potential readers, making it a little hard to market. It’s not really a newsletter about fashion or film or food or culture. Why sketches of old men and their dogs in Palm Springs? Why a deep-dive on a local breakfast taco spot?
But it’s pretty simple: The Scumbler is everything that I’m into. The name comes from a painting technique that involves dragging paint across a canvas with a dry brush, creating a patchy, transparent effect, and that gets at my hope for the newsletter. It glances off fashion and film and food and culture without pretending to be comprehensive about any of it. Here at The Scumbler, we are under no obligation to cover the biggest news of the week — just to tell you about the things that have captured my curiosity. And I suspect — I hope — they might capture yours, too.
See you next Friday!
Eliza