I publish a weekly newsletter for The New Leaf Journal called The Newsletter Leaf Journal (see what I just did there?). If you are not a regular reader, you can sign up for our weekly email, use the newsletter’s RSS feed, or check in on the newsletter archive page (all issues are available in the web archive). One goal I have always had with the newsletter, which I started back in July 2020, is to make it worth reading even for people who stay up to date with The New Leaf Journal. That is, while I recap my new articles in the newsletter, I want to also provide something unique for readers. The two standard unique features of my newsletters are a collection of links from around the web (with my commentary) and a ranking of the most-visited New Leaf Journal articles of the week. We will focus on the former – the collected links – in this article.
Specifically, I will explain how I collect and format links for the newsletter and add my patented commentary. As readers will learn, I make use of several open source applications to put together my around the web link workflow.
Link Collecting Workflow
Below, I will explain my current link-collecting workflow. In short, it involves the following steps and apps:
- Reading articles (feed reader + web browser, I currently use Miniflux and Ironfox on GrapheneOS/Android)
- Saving links (I share links from Miniflux/Ironfox to an Android app called Markor)
- Syncing saved articles (I use Syncthing to keep my Markor links file in sync between my phone and computers)
- Editing and formatting links for publication (I use the Ghostwriter markdown editor on my computer)
- Cutting and pasting links into the newsletter (I cut links I want to use for a given newsletter from my saved links markdown file and paste them into a separate markdown file containing my newsletter draft)
Now let us detail each step.
1. Reading articles
The first and most important part of my link collecting is a feed reader (see my introduction to feeds and feed readers). I use a feed reader to collect articles and media from my own curated list of preferred sources into one place. My current feed reader is my own Miniflux instance hosted with Pikapods, but as I detailed in an article on combining a feed reader with a read-it-later solution, I have also used the Android-only Handy Reading as my feed reader for long stretches. However, the specific feed reader is less important than using a feed reader. However, note that the main reason I use a feed reader is for my own reading. That is, I do not use the feed reader primarily to collect links for the newsletter. My link collecting flows from my ordinary reading.
I can access my Miniflux instance from any web browser. My preferred link collection workflow is based on my phone. I do much of my feed reading on my Google Pixel 6a, which runs the Android-derived and security-focused GrapheneOS operating system. While I use GrapheneOS instead of “stock” Android, everything I am about to describe works the same for any modern Android or Android-derived (e.g., LineageOS, /e/ OS, Fire OS, etc.) system, so I will use “Android” instead of “GrapheneOS” for simplicity.
2. Saving links
When I come across an article that I want to use in the newsletter, I use the native Android share menu to share the link.
Now we go from the browser in which I am running Miniflux (or other feed reader) to another app. On my phone, I have a free and open source text editor app called Markor. It is possible to share a link from a website or app to Markor using Android’s native share functionality. What I like about it is that it formats links to share in markdown. After I choose Markor as the destination for a link, I am prompted to pick a file to place the link in.
I have a file called atw.md for my around the web links (.md is a file extension for markdown files). When I am saving a link for future newsletter usage, I share it to atw.md.
The link comes out properly formatted in markdown with the page title and url (I do sometimes need to edit the title, for example some pages do not provide the title and in other cases it comes with extra information such as the website name). One neat feature about Markor is how well set up it is for saving links. It adds each new link to the bottom of the document with a separator and leaves two empty lines before the separator.
3. Syncing links
While I do much of my feed reading and feed collecting on my phone, the rest of the work happens on my computer. My seemless phone-to-computer workflow is powered by a free and open source app/program called Syncthing. Syncthing provides for peer-to-peer syncing of directories between devices with no central server. On my phone, I have Syncthing-Fork installed which provides a wrapper for Syncthing.
On my computer, I have the regular Linux Syncthing installed. I sync my phone’s Markor directory, which includes atw.md and other plain text documents, between my phone and other devices using Syncthing.
4. Editing and formatting links
I edit and format links before adding my commentary. While it would be entirely possible to do this on my phone using Markor, that would be terribly unpleasant (I am not a fan of typing on touch screens and attaching a keyboard would be cumbersome). Instead, I edit the atw.md file on my computer using my favorite text/markdown editor, Ghostwriter.
There are three steps to my link editing process:
- Make corrections to the link title. This is not always necessary. But as I noted in the previous section, there are cases where the link title does not come out properly or where it adds unnecessary information such as the site name. Speaking of the site name…
- Create a hard break and then add a line with the author, site name, and date of publication. After I am satisfied with the hyperlinked link title, I create a hard break to ensure that we are starting a new line (shift + enter in Ghostwriter). I then add the author and site name (author for site name in the case of a site with multiple authors or author at site name when the author him or herself runs the site or it is a single author site. Iin some cases in the latter Yet people living in expensive housing ordering food from expensive restaurants witness the delivery arriving at their doors in these bags.scenario I just use the author name)). punctuated by a period. Then I add the date of publication of the article.
- Add commentary. While I certainly could just share interesting links, I add my own (sometimes humorous and/or specious) commentary for the enjoyment of newsletter readers. In this case, I create two hard breaks (shift + enter) after the author/date line. (Note: The two hard breaks here are needed for things to look good in the newsletter service I use, but may not be necessary with every markdown parser.) Then on the new line, I begin a markdown block quote, which is triggered by beginning the line with a > symbol. Then in the block quote field, I add my commentary.
With that, my link is ready to be copied into a newsletter. See the formatted version below.
As you can see (compare to the first screenshot in this section), I edited the title and URL, added author and date information, and then wrote and formatted my link commentary.
5. Cutting and pasting links into the newsletter
I draft my newsletters on my computer using Ghostwriter. In the case of the newsletter, my workflow is straight-forward since the newsletter service I have been using since early 2021, Buttondown, natively supports markdown. I put my links in the “Leaves from around the web” section of the newsletter, which almost always follows the general introduction and “Leaves from the week that was” sections, the latter being the one where I discuss my most recent articles. These days, I almost always put 21 links from around the web in the Leaves from around the web section, but I include more than 21 on rare occasions when I was unable to publish new articles or when I skipped a newsletter for one reason or another.
Once I reach the “Leaves from around the web” section, I open up my separate atw.md file containing my links. Thanks to the work I did in step 4, every link in atw.md is already properly formatted for the newsletter and ready to be cut from atw.md and pasted into the new newsletter markdown file. All I need to do on the newsletter end of things is create sub-headers (I organize links under thematic level-three sub-headers within the level-two “Leaves from around the web” header) and insert hard breaks between separate links/commentary in the newsletter to ensure that everything is spaced correctly.
Before moving on, it is important to note (for understanding my workflow) that I always have many more than 21 links in my atw.md file. For example, I still have (as of the publication date of this article) a few links I collected back in the third quarter of 2024. The most challenging part of preparing my newsletter is deciding which links to use from my collection in a given issue. Here I weigh a variety of factors including, but not limited to, whether I can group some of the links together under a sub-header in a fun thematic way, whether any of the links are relevant to my newest articles, whether certain links are time-sensitive, and other discretionary factors.
Other ways collecting links
My link-collecting workflow is an example of a workflow being shaped by tools I already used rather than seeking out tools to create a workflow. Toward the end of 2022, I started thinking about ways to create a repository of saved links for use in the newsletter instead of looking finding links as part of the newsletter writing process. I was already using a feed reader (Flym-DecSync at the time) primarily on my phone and I had Markor installed for rare phone text-editing purposes. I put two-and-two together and developed my workflow for saving, formatting, and commentating on links with tools I already had installed.
While my specific workflow may not work for everyone, I think that concept does. A feed reader is the best way to stay on top of interesting sources which may provide links (and as I explained in my article on combining feeds and read-it-later, a good feed collection should lead to interesting out-of-feed links as well). People who read out of interest are more likely to find and recommend interesting links than those who start from trying to find links. Setting aside the formatting steps which may vary depending on publishing tools (e.g., my Markor-based set-up is useful for me because I draft articles in markdown), having an easy way to save links directly from the feed reader or web browser into a place where they can be easily accessed and reviewed makes sense regardless of other steps in the workflow. I will note that I have also saved links from by computer directly into my atw.md file.
People looking for other workflows should consider which apps and tools they use on their devices. For example, some people may benefit from using software or a service for cataloging links. I personally use Zotero to save and annotate interesting articles (Zotero features in my research articles) and I am maintaining a Linkding instance as a read-it-later tool and possible tool for sharing links. Some feed readers and feed reading solutions have their own link saving built in (Miniflux does, although I only use it to save certain links to Linkding). There are countless alternative ways for a link saving and sharing workflow, including using a browser’s native bookmarks functionality. While it would be neat if someone reads my Miniflux-Markor-Syncthing-Ghostwriter workflow and copies it, my article may inspire ideas in readers and writers using a different set of tools.
