The Food Section has never balked at meeting readers where they’re at. The problem is big tech has all too often stood in the way of us getting there.
When TFS finally had spending money, the first thing we did was create a standalone website, since we didn’t want our journalism confined to a social media site—or our future determined by the company in charge of it. But relying on email as a primary delivery mechanism hardly amounts to liberation from tech giants’ dubious practices. According to one recent analysis (albeit one conducted by an outfit with a vested interest in alarming prospective customers), 40 percent of emails reaching Gmail inboxes are deprioritized by AI filters.
Soon, unbiased experts say, AI could eliminate the inbox as we know it.
So, we’ve come up with another way for you to engage with The Food Section, and make sure you never miss a story. Thanks to the support of our generous donors, TFS today is launching an app. Now, you can find our latest reportage on your phone’s home screen, right alongside shortcuts to social media, podcasts, or whatever other platforms you value most.
Convenience is a major factor in the app’s favor, but here’s what else is cool about the new tool:
- Stories are presented as photo cards, so you can swipe through pictures to see what you want to read this week, rather than trying to excavate a series of newsletters from your inbox.
- Want to be first to know what TFS publishes? If you turn on notifications, you can get a story alert each morning.
- Finally, this is a little wonky, but the app is furnished with a metered paywall. What that means is if you install the app, you can read a limited number of subscriber-only stories before deciding whether this publication’s for you.
- Stories are presented as photo cards, so you can swipe through pictures to see what you want to read this week, rather than trying to excavate a series of newsletters from your inbox.
- Want to be first to know what TFS publishes? If you turn on notifications, you can get a story alert each morning.
- Finally, this is a little wonky, but the app is furnished with a metered paywall. What that means is if you install the app, you can read a limited number of subscriber-only stories before deciding whether this publication’s for you.
To be clear, we aren’t abandoning email newsletters. We’ll still ship out TFS every weekday morning at 8 a.m. Eastern for folks who prefer getting their food news that way. Which is to say: it’s fine to proceed as though the app never happened. But we want every reader’s experience to be as pleasurable as our finances allow (Speaking of money, it’s not too late to make a tax-deductible donation to the fund which facilitated this project!)
In other words: Please enjoy!
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