Just like many young curious persons I always want to know what’s happening around me but even with a smartphone and laptop that’s mostly connected to the internet, I always found myself relying on what’s trending on social media to know what’s happening in the news — may be that’s bad but then that was my reality and probably that of many other people.
I mostly had issues with the tone and format of news — It’s often longer than I need it to be and uninteresting. So I started asking why is everyone telling news the same way, what if I cut out most of the jargons and just tell the news the way I would tell a friend? Surely I would use fewer words and try to come down to their level.
After much thinking and talking, three months ago inspired by Morning Brew, Skimm & Finimize — popular US-based Newsletters I still read — we started Cloout.
A weekly newsletter that’s short(~10 mins), easy to understand and witty. It’s focused on Business/Finance & Governance/Politics news for Nigeria, Africa and the Global scene. We chose these areas because despite it’s importance many people are excluded from knowing what’s happening here.
We believe:
Everyone shouldn’t have to tell stories the same way. We actually get to choose how we want to tell stories.
Learning should never stop, why not use the news to continue learning.
Taking a deep breath is usually a better plan. While everyone is rushing to break the news, we’d prefer to listen for what’s driving the news.
Why emails though?
Algorithms change. Platforms shut down. But email just keeps working.
What have we done?
We’ve written 10 issues of the newsletter, so we’re still early in the game and figuring it out. We weren’t certain we’d be able to keep up because we have other obligations but fortunately, we’ve gone 10 weeks and we’re still moving strong, more certain about what we want to do and also importantly what we don’t want to do.
Week 10 😊😊😊@trycloout
Count from 1 to 10 🎉 – https://t.co/nR7iiVNcse
— Daniel Adeyemi (@DanielTAdeyemi) May 18, 2019
What’s next?
Getting all the help we can to make the newsletter better — Extra hands, Ideas, Partnerships.
We started the journey of creating the type of news we’d like to read not being sure about how it’d turn out but hey they say you never miss the shots you don’t try, so we decided to give it a shot.
As always, we’re open to ideas and feedback, we’re still figuring this out. You can talk to me @danieltadeyemi on social media or send a mail to [email protected]