Slow Boring's fourth year

Those hard boards aren't going to drill themselves

Today is the first day of the fourth year of Slow Boring, a good time to take stock of both the trajectory of the site and the broader political circumstances.

First, a brief update on the site itself.

Our annual revenue rose a bit over 15% over the course of Year Three, which represents an acceleration relative to eight percent revenue growth in Year Two.

And I’m really happy that we’ve been able to achieve that without raising prices. Obviously our supply chain is not heavily impacted by inflation. But it’s still true that when we launched, a month of Slow Boring was 44% the price of a month of Netflix, and we’re now down to 35%. I like to think we offer a quality editorial product, but I understand that no one is in danger of running out of interesting things to read, so having the price become more affordable over time seems good.

One upside of revenue growth is that we’re able to expand the scope of the operation. With Ben joining the team full-time, we’ll be able to be more consistent in our community-building efforts and hopefully expand the scope of our editorial output a bit. I’m also really hoping to increase our audio offerings this year and to get a more regular podcast off the ground soon. And maybe this will be the year I finally deliver on the promise to sell t-shirts.

But the point is, it’s been a great year of growth thanks to Kate and Claire and Milan and Maya, but fundamentally, it’s thanks to all of you who subscribe.

I’m truly grateful from the bottom of my heart to everyone who supported this project at launch and to everyone who has given it a try since then. It’s an immense privilege to be able to write for a dedicated, paying audience and not be held hostage to the vagaries of tech platform distribution fads and digital advertising trends.

Thank you all.

The basic political problem

Slow Boring has prospered, but I think that only underscores the need for more complex forms of institution-building.

Because while I absolutely, 100 percent believe in the importance of takes in shaping the world of political possibilities, it’s also clear to me that certain things can only be achieved by something more tangible than columns.