It’s been quite a week for people who like fun on the internet. First there was the sudden rise of Twitter competitor Bluesky, spurring headlines like “I regret to inform you that Bluesky is fun.” And now there’s The Stopgap, a new blog from writers Daniel M. Lavery (who cofounded, with Nicole Cliffe, the beloved and now-defunct The Toast and was Slate’s Dear Prudence) and Jo Livingstone (who previously wrote for The New Republic and Bookforum).
“I think anybody who has in the past enjoyed reading the internet purely for fun can see that there’s a real dearth of URLs to type into one’s address bar these days,” Livingstone told me in a chat with Lavery this week. We conducted the interview in a live Google Doc — my way of allowing both of their internet voices to operate at a maximum, and eliciting comparisons of The Stopgap to “a stately pleasure barge of a site” (Lavery) or “a burnish’d throne??” (Livingstone). The Stopgap launched Wednesday morning, and you can read it here.
Laura Hazard Owen: Hi both. How did you decide to launch The Stopgap, and how you are you envisioning it? Also, why did you call it “The Stopgap”?
Jo Livingstone: Danny texted me and asked if I wanted to make a website with him. Which is funny, because I had thought about it too, because it just seemed — obvious? Right? Inevitable?
Danny Lavery: This is incredible, because I would have sworn up and down that it was Jo’s idea. Was it seriously me who said something first?
Don’t worry, no one’s going to try to make money from this one. That lesson’s been learnt! This one’s just for fun, and per its tagline: “Better than nothing”
That’s @The_Stopgap, remember. Accept no substitutes, and watch this space.
— Daniel M. Lavery (@daniel_m_lavery) April 27, 2023
I think anybody who has in the past enjoyed reading the internet purely for fun can see that there’s a real dearth of URLs to type into one’s address bar these days.
The Stopgap’s motto: “It’s better than nothing.”
This will be an old fashioned, general interest blog, mostly written by us. We’ll make no money, produce no podcasty newslettery bullshit, and pay nothing—although readers can donate direct to guest authors thru financial socials.
— jo livingstone (@Jo_Livingstone) April 27, 2023
Owen: You’re not going to pay writers, they’ll just have tip jars — which, in an everything-old-is-new-again way, feels innovative. You’re going into this without a business model or worries about scale or, like, how you’re going to monetize, and you’re not promising writers will be paid well or at all. There’s an implication that this is being done out of joy, which has been so lacking from basically all media recently! Tell me how you’re thinking about money for this from both your side and the writers’ side — like side gig, pleasure blog, etc.?
So the idea is that the vast majority of the writing on the site will come from Jo and self, but we’ll be able to publish at a comfortable rate — since we’re not trying to keep to a publication schedule that attracts advertisers — and occasionally put up a post from anyone else who cares to join us. The tip jar was very much Jo’s idea. Maybe it will result in all our guest writers being able to buy themselves a stamp or a cup of hearty soup or something! Who can say.
The money stuff is interesting. Put together, Danny and I have sort of madly comprehensive experience working in different types of publishing, at different ends of the process. Danny has published 10,000 books and run a whole publication in the past, and I’ve worked business jobs at literary nonprofits and writer jobs at “regular” magazines, and events at NYC hotels, and…every kind of job you can think of. Not to brag, but if there was an obvious way to make money here I feel like I would know about it.
There’s only one way that people on the social internet feel comfortable and well-practiced in sending money to strangers: When they know the other person’s name, have some basis for independently assessing whether or not they want to give them money, and they’re already familiar with the process. For some people, maybe that context is typing in their credit card details manually into The New York Times’ website. For most people, it’s throwing a few bucks to somebody who has earned it or needs it via Venmo, CashApp, PayPal, etc.
The tip jar idea encapsulates a lot of what has changed in the topography of the internet since the “golden age of blogging.” Those are heavy irony quotation marks because obviously people have always pumped disgusting shit into the world. There are better free or cheap CMSes available. Small financial transactions are in a different universe.
In short, we pictured what we wanted and then took the absolute shortest route available towards creating it. Right now, for example, I’m playing with a complicated subscription model built into the product we’re using, because I want to turn on comments. But that’s oddly easy, because the product thinks I want to make my living from emails! It’s interesting — we’re just throwing our needs and wants at the internet and seeing what’s sticking. The thing we need and want the most is to enjoy ourselves.
Owen: Ha, yeah, so speaking of making your living from emails! Talk to me a little bit about Substack and also why Jo said The Stopgap would “produce no podcasty newslettery bullshit.” Really, just feel free to vomit out your thoughts on Substack.
Besides which, sometimes I want to write more often, but I don’t want to email my newsletter subscribers six times a week. If I were to imagine the Platonic ideal of a Daniel Lavery “guy,” who is my biggest supporter in the world and reads every single thing I’ve ever written, I don’t think even he would want to get a newsletter email from me every single day. You can only email people so much!
Livingstone: Danny could not publish garbage or speak it with his mouth if he TRIED.
Owen: Awesome, OK. is there anything else that either of you want to add?
Now that my green card finally got approved (!!) I feel able to look up and around me suddenly, to realize that my wonderful friend Danny helped me get to make a website that could have gotten me through the last shitty year of my life with a little more ease, and maybe will help someone else. You need to have papers in order to “work” in journalism. You do not need papers to blog. And for that I am so very grateful.
Lavery: Yes, the idea of working together with Jo was something I really wanted to do! And would gladly do for free. I just think this will be pretty fun. And if it’s ever too much work, we’ll just work less on it! But there ought to be a little website. People ought to be able to type a little something into their address bar and get to look at something interesting, every once in a while, else what’s a heaven for!