French Election Blog and Newsletter Now on Substack

Why I left MailChimp.

Today’s newsletter looks a little different. That’s because I switched from MailChimp to Substack.

MailChimp is focusing on online retail and by now has 99 features I don’t need. Substack is made for writers, and it takes far less time to copy-paste content from the blog into a Substack newsletter and send it on its way.

I also hope the move will help me find new readers. Nobody stumbles on a MailChimp newsletter, but Substack has many existing users and few newsletters about Europe. So hopefully there’s a niche.

Finally, Substack would allow me to charge for subscriptions if I wanted to take that step. I’m considering making it an option to enable you to support my writing, but keeping atlanticsentinel.com gratis.

I’m also experimenting with a newsletter on LinkedIn, where I got 253 subscribers so far. Here I have 306, although I imagine there’s some overlap. Let’s see which works best. (And please let me know what you think! Send your feedback to nick.ottens@atlanticsentinel.com.)

French election blog

One thing you can’t do in a newsletter is a live blog, so for that you’ll have to head over to atlanticsentinel.com. We’re live-blogging the first round of the French presidential election today. Read the Atlantic Sentinel for analysis, commentary and — starting at 8 PM Central European Time — the results.

If you haven’t been following my coverage of the French election but want to know more, read my election guide. That will catch you up on the basics in 5 minutes. Then read our endorsement of Macron. The Atlantic Sentinel team thinks he deserves a second term.

To help you understand the differences between the major candidates, I put together bullet-pointed lists of their policies. You can also read my analysis of Macron’s successes and failures, and Ainslie Noble’s story on how the riots and calls for autonomy on Corsica influenced the election. Happy reading!