"Is This Anything?"

launching a magazine in 2024

Before I introduce my special guest author this week, I want to say thank you to my diamond medallion Attention Economy subscribers: thank you for flying Leigh Stein. I’m now a Substack bestseller! 🤩 Friday’s event with Windy Dorresteyn (watch the replay here) reminded me why I’m doing these chat room conversations: there just aren’t enough professional development opportunities for mid-career authors. There are a gazillion “how to query” workshops, and classes on “character development,” but once you’ve published one, two, or three books, you’re not looking for another craft seminar. More likely, you are looking to take your writing career to the next level. (Or you are trying to come back from a publishing setback!)

Today I’m delighted to bring you a special guest post from novelist/culture writer Kirthana Ramisetti, one of the creators of a new pop culture magazine on Substack. I love how this collaborative side project allows a collective of writers to publish work they care about (without having to go through the demoralizing process of pitching). I think this model could inspire a lot of people to start something fun and weird on the side, so I asked Kirthana to write a behind-the-scenes guest post for me!

Is This Anything?

by Kirthana Ramisetti

This past August, I teamed up with four of my author friends to launch a writer-owned publication called Ministry of Pop Culture. And like many projects, our site was born out of the pandemic—but not intentionally.

In early 2021, journalist and New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Keishin Armstrong emailed the writers in her network to propose forming an accountability group with the goal of workshopping pop culture-related pitches. And as someone who had hosted freelancer happy hours prior to the pandemic, she also hoped to recreate the community of those gatherings. Four of us—Saul Austerlitz, Erin Carlson, Thea Glassman and myself—expressed interest. 

We called our monthly Zoom meetings "Is This Anything?" because that's the question we would self-deprecatingly ask before sharing our pitch ideas. 

When Jennifer put out the call, I was just months away from publishing my first novel after a decade working in online media. Each month, we would meet virtually: Saul, Jennifer and I would Zoom in from NYC, Thea from Los Angeles and Erin from San Francisco.¹ Many of my early pitches were tied to the pandemic, such as my COVID-era comfort watch and how watching a British reality show helped me write my novel during lockdown.

From those Zoom brainstorming sessions, we published articles in several outlets, including the New York Times, The Cut, BBC Culture², The Atlantic, Elle and Salon. 

The group worked so well because we shared many of the same interests and frame of references (we skew Gen X and Xennial), allowing us to form a deep sense of trust with one another when seeking advice. Many of us had worked for publications and in newsrooms, and our monthly ITA sessions gave us a similar kind of camaraderie. 

After meeting regularly for three years, we had something else in common besides our love of pop culture: we all had published books about it. My friends have collectively published over 15 nonfiction titles, primarily about films and television, including books about Anchorman, Mean Girls, the films of Nora Ephron and the classic teen shows of the 90s and 2000s. I am the outlier as a novelist whose books are imbued with my love of music and my fascination with Hollywood ambitions and celebrity culture.³

Outside of ITA, we supported each other as authors, including moderating each other’s book events. Yet the original reason we began meeting—workshopping our freelance pitches—was stymied by a changing media landscape. 

In the early months of 2024, the journalism industry experienced a devastating number of layoffs, with several major digital publications such as Vice and Buzzfeed News shut down altogether. This meant that there were fewer places to pitch our stories: either our previous editors had been laid off, or they were too busy and overwhelmed to respond to our pitches.  

It was a deflating time to be a writer. Thea was laid off from her full-time position at The Messenger, a news site whose headline-making collapse illustrated the perils of working in digital media. And with the industry so unstable, we commiserated about how it no longer seemed worth the time to craft a pitch. Not when our emails would be ignored or go unseen.

And so we decided to create a space where we could publish the articles that we wanted to write, irrespective of timeliness, trending topics or news pegs. Inspired by writer-owned and operated collectives such as Defector and Flaming Hydra, we formed Ministry of Pop Culture.

What has made this so rewarding is that we already had an established mutual respect, both as friends and fellow writers. We knew we could trust each other to write capably, meet deadlines and edit each other’s work. It’s just that now when we bounce ideas off each other, it’s for the purpose of achieving a collective goal, rather than an individual byline. And perhaps most importantly, we are no longer pitching ideas that we hope get greenlit by editors, but instead have the freedom and support to write about whatever we wish.

This is especially important since we’ve each faced skepticism for choosing to focus on a subject matter often viewed as unimportant or frivolous. But for the five of us, pop culture matters deeply, not just for how it affects our lives, but how it also impacts the world around us. 

At times, Ministry of Pop Culture reflects our current moment, such as with Jennifer’s story about Kamala Harris being embraced by Gen Z pop stars and internet culture, and Saul’s piece examining new models of American masculinity through the lens of Tim Walz and Ted Lasso. Or MOPC is a place where we can share original reporting from previous projects, such as Erin’s Q&A with Aline Brosh McKenna about writing The Devil Wears Prada screenplay and working with Meryl Streep. It’s an interview that didn’t make the cut for Erin’s book about Streep, but is worth sharing now in light of the news that McKenna is writing a sequel to Prada. For us, pop culture can be very personal too, as seen in Thea’s essay about finding comfort in seeking out the real-life filming locations of her favorite films and TV shows.

So often we would feel hamstrung by needing to wait for a news peg to pitch story ideas. With MOPC, we have the space to share our ideas on topics based on our own whims. For example, I came up with a theory about Carrie Bradshaw during my umpteenth rewatch of Sex and the City. What might have otherwise ended up as an impassioned text message to friends instead became my first story on the site.

Jennifer was thrilled to publish her essay on what pop culture such as Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" and the comedy Schitt's Creek taught her about relationships. It’s the kind of piece that mainstream media outlet would have required a timely news hook. With our own site, there is no reason to wait. As she correctly notes, streaming has changed the way we watch movies and television, and "someone, somewhere, is watching Schitt's Creek for the first time right now."  

In my case, Ministry of Pop Culture allowed me to finally publish a piece I had tried to get published for the past two years: Bravo's dismal track record with Asian American reality stars, especially the fact the network recently axed some stars during AAPI Heritage Month. I knew that the idea was a good one, despite the rejection and silence that greeted my queries. Often, many freelance pitches die when they can’t find a home. So to finally be able to publish the Bravo article on a platform I co-founded was very meaningful for me.

We envision MOPC as a space that's a comfy and welcoming home to culture writing in some of its best forms — insightful, quirky, unabashedly obsessive, niche and pop. Our goal is to earn enough that this venture will be sustainable for us long term. And if we can achieve this, then we can then afford to pay freelance contributors, since it's our priority to feature new voices on the site.

To that end, we offer special perks for those who sign up for a “founding members” subscription. These include personalized Zoom calls, book club appearances, and even trivia nights hosted by the “minister” of your choice. We hope these offerings reflect how serious we are about making MOPC a destination site for those who love to dish about movies, TV, books, music and more.

As writers, we’re used to working solo, with long hours spent in front of a computer willing the words to come. But first through our monthly Zooms, and now through Ministry of Pop Culture, writing has become that most unexpected but welcome thing: collaborative, and even fun.

Kirthana Ramisetti is the author of The Other Lata, Advika and the Hollywood Wives and Dava Shastri’s Last Day, a Good Morning America Book Club selection optioned by Max. Her novels have received acclaim from TIME, Cosmopolitan, The Washington Post, Buzzfeed, The Associated Press and more. Besides co-founding the newsletter Ministry of Pop Culture, her writing has appeared in many publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Elle, and Salon. She lives in New York City.

Kirthana has given Attention Economy subscribers 20% off a year’s subscription to Ministry of Pop Culture. Click here to subscribe

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Upcoming Events

• September 10th at 8pm EST: chat room with Kate Napolitano, editorial director of non-fiction at Atria. Kate has acquired and edited books by Anne Helen Petersen, Jennifer Romolini, Malala Yousafzai, Phoebe Robinson, Cazzie David, and Pamela Anderson. We are going to be talking about writer resentment toward celebrity memoirs and what writers with no previous experience starring in Baywatch can actually do to make their non-fiction proposal enticing to an editor.

• September 13th at 1pm EST: chat room with literary agent Mackenzie Brady Watson all about writing and selling memoir plus, and weaving together the personal with the historical. Don’t miss this one if you are trying to sell a memoir! Mackenzie is the person who taught ME “memoir plus.”

• September 25th at 8pm EST: Getting Started in Self-Publishing class with Libby Waterford (register here)

• September 28th I’m teaching a free Fan Poetry workshop (no previous poetry experience necessary) in the Catskills at The Lost Bookshop (register here)

• October 11th at 1pm EST: chat room with BookTok creator Stacey Yu (literaryfling), who was shortlisted for Creator of the Year by the TikTok UK Book Awards

• November 14th at 8pm EST: How to Get a Book Deal the Easy Way (register here)

1. Jennifer has since moved to the Hudson Valley, and Thea has relocated to NYC.

2. This article is ITA’s biggest success story, as the piece led Jennifer to receive an invitation to Gloria Steinem’s apartment!

3. I always feel lucky to get insights into the work that goes into writing a nonfiction book focused on pop culture. Our many email threads on the topic could double as a graduate course on navigating that process.