What is Media Unspun?
It's a new newsletter published by the team that used to produce Media Grok for The Industry Standard (R.I.P.). Now as then, our goal is to keep our readers up-to-date on the most important business news, show how different news outlets interpret the same information in different ways, and, if we're lucky, entertain you at the same time.

The same editorial team? Really?
Yes. Deborah Asbrand, Keith Dawson, Jen Muehlbauer, and Lori Patel are still the regular writers. Jim Duffy is still the copyeditor. I'm still the editor. I appear to be the publisher, too, since no one else has volunteered.

Why aren't you still called what you used to be called?
Media Grok is a trademark owned by International Data Group, which owns the assets of Standard Media International, the parent company of The Industry Standard. We're publishing independently, not under the wing of a large publisher. The name has changed, but the attitude remains similarly barbed. We unspin what the media produces and make sense out of it.

Why are you charging a subscription fee? Doesn't content want to be free, or something like that?
As much as we all enjoy this work, this is not a hobby for any of us. This is a business. We have enough funding to keep us going for many months, but we won't last many years unless we take in significant revenue. We are distibuting a free weekly missive to those who have yet to pay up, but it offers only a fraction of the value of the daily edition. (We're running advertisements, too.) We hope you'll feel the $50 annual fee is a bargain considering the volume of information we deliver and the time we save our readers. Isn't 96 cents a week a steal? Less than 19 cents every work day? Think about how much money you throw away at Starbucks in a normal week.

How do I pay?
We've set up accounts with PayPal (very smooth, our readers tell us) and the Amazon Honor System (not quite as smooth, but some people don't like PayPal); you can pay here using those methods. You can pay by check, too, although there are some restrictions. We prefer you pay via PayPal, since they take a smaller cut than Amazon.

What's your plan?
We have reasonable expectations. We're not buying any Oracle back-end systems or Aeron chairs. We want our funding to last as long as possible so we're being, well, cheap. We want to build a modest, solid business. Assuming all goes well, we expect to launch a second newsletter and a new service later this year.

How can I help?
Pay for a subscription, of course. But also tell your friends. The inaugural issue of Media Unspun was sent to the 8,000 people who wrote to us after Media Grok closed down. We didn't buy that newsletter's database of 100,000 readers; we need to get our readership back to that level. So, if you like what you read, please pass on the word: Subscribe to Media Unspun.

What is your publishing schedule?
Media Unspun is published daily except for the usual holidays: New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Day, President's Day, Good Friday, Passover, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, the Jewish High Holidays, a holiday in October whose name eludes me right now, Veteran's Day, Thanksgiving and the days before and after, and December 24-31. In addition, we will not publish the last two weeks of August, when there isn't that much business news to unspin anyway. We promise to publish each day by 7.30am Silicon Valley Time (most days Unspun hits inboxes an hour earlier than that), but cannot be held responsible if our e-mail provider or your ISP decides to play bottleneck. (If the technical problem is on our side, rest assured that we're making the day uncomfortable for our e-mail provider. But that hasn't happened yet; we have only good things to say about iMakeNews.)

Are you a blog?
We're big fans of the freedom and diversity of blogs, but we're not a blog. Blogs go from a single person's mind to the Web with no intervention. Here, we have writers and editors, all of whom collaborate to create a product we intend to be professional as well as useful and entertaining.

What's your corrections policy?
If it's something minor like a typographical error, we simply fix it. If it's something more important, we fix it in the Web version, note that we've fixed it, and include a note about the error and the correction at the top of the next day's email version. No hiding.

I hate reading privacy policies. Can you summarize yours quickly?
We don't track you, we don't share your names with anyone else, and we won't let anyone else spam you. You're our readers, not just names in a database we can sell. Many of you have trusted us by sending us money for a daily service months in advance. The least we can do in return is not treat you like crap.

How do I change my subscription from HTML or text?
See the link to do that at the bottom of the newsletter.

How do I unsubscribe?
Either use the link at the bottom of the newsletter or do it via the home page of this web site.

Is there any different in the content between the text and HTML versions?
Not yet. There will be in the future, though. We'll let you know when that happens.

What if I've tried everything to change something in my account and it doesn't work?
Send me an email at guterman@vineyard.com and I'll help you as quickly as I can.