The Honest Broker

The newsletter is positioned as the one source readers can trust. Gioia named it for the trusted go-between that Chinese business communities rely on. That person introduces trustworthy people, charges nothing upfront, and years later asks for a favor.

He learned the idea while setting up a company in China as a consultant, when powerful contacts gave contradictory advice and a drunk Australian at a hotel bar told him to find the honest broker. He saw his writing problem had the same answer: be the person readers can trust, and shoot straight. With surveys showing trust in media, experts and professors collapsing, he argues the honest broker is needed in the US maybe more than ever.

How I Write

Every piece must be fair, accurate and persuasive to fair-minded readers. Gioia estimates about 50% of newsletter and article writing carries an agenda, so readers are rightly skeptical. He sets aside telling readers what they want to hear, pleasing editors, flattering musicians and tilting arguments for a cause, and counts any piece that would not convince fair-minded observers as a failure.

"This is the most important thing to me is my relationship with my reader." He also drops the cool pose common in music writing and admits his own limits, such as being arrested at Stanley Crouch's house after misreading an alarm, because admitting failings makes readers trust the rest.

How I Write▶ 11:26

Frequent emails made the prose conversational, like talking to a friend at dinner. Readers who get emails several times a week feel they know the writer, so Gioia's style shifted to direct banter without planning it. Fellow Substack writer Dan Stone had warned him readers would act like longtime friends.

Showing off with Shakespeare or Plato feels awkward in that setting, so he hides obscure asides instead, like Kant's "dogmatic slumber", which perhaps one reader in a thousand catches and enjoys. The surface stays direct with layers for expert readers.

How I Write▶ 21:18

Gioia serializes a full book on Substack, straight to readers. Music to Raise the Dead, about the Orpheus myth and music's power to bring people back, had 10 of its 12 chapters published, each self-contained so any chapter reads alone.

It keeps footnotes and scholarly apparatus and is less conversational than his usual posts. His reasoning: "if I can do it for a newsletter, why not for a book."

How I Write

A two-million-view clip brought no readers; substantive writing did. A short Instagram clip of Gioia got 2 million views and no readers, because ten seconds offers nothing to build a relationship on. Meanwhile his subscriber base grew 30% in 10 weeks.

He says it is "death to try to chase the culture" of faster, dumber writing, notes the editors who told him to dumb it down are out of a job, and expects culture to turn from anger toward kindness within 5 to 10 years, the way organic food grew against processed food.

How I Write▶ 1:50:01

No sponsors, and new subscribers are told to expect the unexpected. Gioia takes no advertisers or sponsors and warns new readers up front that he takes chances, so some will be upset. He follows Stewart Brand's idea that annoying no one means you have no real audience, but aims to make the right kind of enemies.

He refuses to chase anger even though it goes viral online. "If you are going to make enemies make the right kind of enemies."

How I Write▶ 45:37