It’s been a while since I’ve been in this chair, but it still feels warm from when I was doing this work nearly 15 years ago. As I said in my introduction post, my background in and love for print and online media have been with me for as long as I can remember.

That’s why taking the role of editor-in-chief at ETH Investors Club and working on our quarterly magazine is such an important challenge— getting Ethereum ecosystem media right is a Herculean task.

I wanted to take a little time out to give a bit of a story on my relationship with media and, at first glance, how I see that evolving alongside this New Internet, especially since there isn’t a virtual bucket of Editors-in-Chief in this space to hear from regularly. If you know any EIC or are an EIC, please reach out. I’d love to connect!!

From an early fascination working with or starting newsletters, newspapers, and magazines covering all sorts of topics, writing, curation, and editing have long been passions of mine. Not only fascinated by writing for print or online publications, though. I’m particularly excited by the stories we tell on a daily basis between friends, in video games, in film, in group chats, and everywhere in between.

Since being part of web3, I re-ignited this love for writing through a newsletter, Mirror posts, editing here and there, freelance writing, and helping other creators. Brands I’ve been privileged to work with just this year include Greenpill Network, Boys Club, Take Up Space, Unlock Protocol, Tally Content Guild, and Celo, among many more.

I recall the purest joy of sitting down at a table in Barnes and Noble as a teenager with nothing else to do on a Tuesday evening than flipping through the latest Macworld, PC World, PC Magazine, or Scientific American with an iced coffee. That is the type of joy I want to evoke for readers through all knowledge levels—giddy, delightful, nerdy joy and optimism, no matter where you’re reading.

Looking Ahead

This is only week one, so no promises, but here are some things I want to accomplish in the next year at EIC:

I want to try getting EIC Quarterly in bookstores. I think it’s a really special space for the average person to discover new tech, and I want to get ETH stories in front of as many eyes with as little current exposure as possible.

Print does that, but being onchain also serves a purpose. I want to find more ways to challenge the ETH ecosystem to reward creatives, especially writers reporting on emerging tech.

I want to make it easier for supporters to redeem physical copies. Getting a physical collectible should be a seamless and rewarding experience. Since EIC is currently donation-funded in the form of collectibles, building out robust options for viewing, sharing, and collecting pieces each quarter is imperative for growth of Ethereum writers, investors, and developers.

I also want to start working on, or at least begin, the conversation about varying the ways we experience these quarterly stories. Are we super sure that media in the year of our Lord 2024 must only include interfaces for print, social, online/onchain, and podcast, and that’s it? I’m not. I think there are tons of new options to explore here.

Defining a few things

Curator: An editor curates words, features, and themes, knowing what needs to be said at just the right moment. For a quarterly magazine, curation is even more important.

Producer: An editor is also a producer of creative work, no matter the interval. Therefore, my aim is always to be easy to work with, treat each author’s work with respect, and provide consistent and timely feedback.

Narrative: An editor determines the voice and broad function of the pieces inside any particular issue. In this case, I view my role as important in maintaining and proliferating Ethereum narratives alongside my demonstrated sense of taste and ability to be terminally online/onchain.

Pitching

Pay: Yes, I'm happy to chat with you about that. We use a combined standard rate flat fee + mint split model. We hope this offers authors ownership, simplicity, and more upside for their work than any other industry.

Since EIC is a quarterly report magazine, one can naturally determine when we’ll be seeking new pitches near the beginning of each new quarter!

Beyond pitches, EIC regularly curates pieces written by ETH ecosystem contributors, so keep shipping great works!

That being said, my DMs on Telegram, Warpcast, Twitter, or email are great places to start the conversation. If you’re a writer with a compelling story on Ethereum or emerging tech relevant to EIC, please reach out at any time.

Here’s a quick guideline for sending pitches to EIC:

• EIC covers DeFi, culture, social, investing, feature interviews, research, and more - all pitches should have some effect on the Ethereum ecosystem

• Read previous issues of EIC. This will help guide the direction of your piece.

• Keep it short but eye-catching: Subject line (PITCH…), headline, short excerpt, list of published work, social links.

• If you need to explain yourself, send a 5-min Loom first before requesting a video call.

• Be curious, be creative, be analytical, factual, but most of all, enjoy the process.

• Tell, don’t sell. A pitch is not the time to sell me on your product or project.

• This is a video from Film Courage on pitching movie ideas. The concepts are similar.

• Here’s another super smart video guide from a writer’s perspective.

*Disclaimer: this may be updated or posted elsewhere in the future.