The rise of email newsletters was one of the dominant consumer tech trends during the first half of the 2020s. An explosion of platforms, feeds, and channels left many consumers feeling overwhelmed, and newsletters provided a perfect solution to that problem. Instead of jumping from one source to another in search of the latest headlines, many consumers now count on newsletter writers to aggregate the day’s biggest stories in their inboxes each morning.
But what happens when, instead of relying on one newsletter, a consumer subscribes to two of them, or ten, or 50? In those cases, newsletters become the problem they were created to solve.
We currently live in that environment. Newsletter platforms like Substack and beehiiv are raising millions while inviting more journalists into the newsletter business. Substack counts more than five million paid subscriptions, with many top newsletters reaching five-digit follower counts. What is an overwhelmed reader to do?
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Enter Mediaite. Since 2009, the news organization has delivered the most coveted stories, gossip items, and meta-narratives from its namesake industry. It has become a trusted reporter on all matters related to the media, and it is now bringing that coverage into the newsletter world.
Mediaite’s One Sheet is a new type of email correspondence. It is a “newsletter of newsletters” that will run through other reporters’ rundowns, collecting the most pertinent updates in a single location. “This is a new daily, five-minute briefing on what the dozens of media newsletters are actually saying — the scoops, arguments, and fault lines shaping the media in real time,” reads Mediaite’s description of its new product. “The goal is simple: one place, one newsletter, to see the media conversation behind the headlines — who’s driving it, who’s missing it, and why it matters.”
That concept reaches a level of meta-ness that might make your head spin, and Mediaite Founder Dan Abrams conceded as much. “We are well aware of the circular nature of this endeavor,” Abrams told The New York Times. He added that the One Sheet is “not trying to take away newsletter business” — instead, it’s “trying to highlight the ones that are most interesting.”
During Mediaite’s early years, content aggregation was a different beast than what it has become in recent years. The RSS feed was the discovery engine of choice for many, and Mediaite operated one of the top RSS feeds in the journalism world.
A pivot to platform-level consumption made RSS readers obsolete, but recent developments have shown that the winds of change are blowing yet again. Old-school discovery is back in, with TikTok naming “curiosity detours” as one of the habits that will define 2026. Companies like Flipboard have put contemporary twists on the RSS format, while individual content aggregators have helped viewers indulge their curiosity on platforms like YouTube Shorts.
Mediaite is ready to bring that sense of discovery to habitual subscribers. The One Sheet could become the paper of record for papers of record, but does it also foretell consolidation coming to the newsletter industry? In a sense, Mediaite just invented the newsroom all over again, reminding us that everything is cyclical — even when it comes to email correspondence.
