Meet Prune

Dirt Media CEO Daisy Alioto introduces our new publication.

Today we are very excited to announce that Dirt Media has acquired Tyler Watamanuk’s design newsletter, Sitting Pretty. Tyler is one of the most original thinkers when it comes to interiors, design and furniture. He has great taste for both dissecting and collecting the trends that shape public and private spaces. He is a longtime contributor to GQ and Dwell and has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Architectural Digest and many more publications.

Luckily for us, Tyler will continue to author the newsletter and become part of the Dirt Media family. Today we are transforming Sitting Pretty… Meet: Prune.

Prune is a weekly newsletter about interiors, design and other things. It will cover everything from Charlotte Perriand’s shelving, to nostalgia for transparent electronics, where to buy a couch and more. You can subscribe to Prune here.

Prune has its own newsletter and subscriber list, and fresh content plus Tyler’s archive will (for now) live on dirt.fyi under a new “Design” category. In true Dirtyverse style, Prune will open more channels in Discord to discuss interiors, graphics, architecture and furniture and to source thoughts from other members of the Dirt community. Like everything we do, it won’t just be a newsletter, but a part of a universe. Prune will have playlists! Our first one is here. Prune will have merch and ephemera.

Today, we’re excited to launch with a very unique piece of ephemera: a limited edition zine paying tribute to the on-screen interiors of director Mike Mills (C’mon C’mon, 20th Century Women, Beginners) available in the Dirt Shop. We only made 30 of them!

Finally, Dirt Media was always meant to be more than Dirt. Tyler is joining forces with Dirt because we have seen a shift in the zeitgeist. Right now, there are a lot of excellent independent creators running their own publications on platforms like Substack and Patreon. But being on these platforms doesn’t offer the same advantages as being a part of a Condé Nast or Hearst where business development (ad sales, subscription strategy, new editorial hires) can be centralized and shared. Not everyone running a newsletter wants to run a business. Eventually, you have to do ads.

As media and tech analyst Benedict Evans writes, the industry moves through cycles. “People will bundle different Substacks into single subscriptions (and then print them out and mail them once a month - ho! ho!), and unbundle verticals from the NY Times or Instagram.” It’s all magazines? Always has been. 

More importantly, even the best-designed creator platform lacks the vision of a magazine publisher. As I’ve previously written in The Taste Economy, magazines are containers for taste. Every publication under the fold of Dirt Media will play a specific role in the dirtyverse. We have a shared system of values and community engagement. We have extremely high standards. We have a capital “B” brand.

Someone has to take the first step toward becoming the Condé Nast of newsletters and we believe it should be us. So let me officially say: Dirt Media is open for business. Want to sell us your newsletter? Bang my line. We have an ambitious, dirt-y vision for the future in which good taste won’t just survive but thrive. Join us. 🛁