TOPIC: a digital publication

Remember our monologue about the importance of reading a few issues back? Not the social feed, bite-size nonsense; and not wonderfully crafted novels either. But the kind of reading that provides context in our rapidly changing world. We subscribe to several newsletters and, since you’re the newsletter-subscribing type yourself, we’ve got another we recommend. TOPIC is a digital publication launched last Summer by First Look Media (bankrolled by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar in 2013, and behind the film Spotlight). Tackling one topic a month, the site uses illustration, photography and short-form video to dive deeply into subjects outside of the news cycle. The results are at times arresting — a recent issue exploring identity since the landmark Supreme Court decision allowing mixed race marriages included a film on the country’s oldest mixed race couple— and whimsical: Daily Show veteran Wyatt Cenac’s fictional series on a superhero struggling with life’s daily minutiae in Brooklyn. But we cherish their 4x-monthly newsletters that zero in on one, well-reported story. Always surprising, always informative. You can subscribe here.