I’m Darren Samuelsohn, and this is love, journalism.
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The last time Neetzan Zimmerman was on The love, journalism Show, The Messenger was collapsing around us in real time. That was February 2024. He was one of the last guests I had before the show went quiet for two years.
A lot has happened since then.
Neetzan was once known as the Editor of the Internet — literally, that was his title at Gawker. He had a gift for understanding what people would click on before they knew it themselves. In November 2013, his posts alone drove 17.3 million unique visitors to Gawker. More than every other writer on staff combined.
Today he and his wife Yulia Shamis run The Newsagent’s — a bookshop, coffee bar, and event space at 228 Fayetteville Street in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. Used paperbacks. Vinyl. VHS tapes. Vintage magazines. No Wi-Fi. No Google. No notifications. Just artifacts and the people who love them.
He put it this way: “The internet is everything now. The goal is to log off. Where is the exit?”
The Newsagent’s is his answer.
We talked about The Messenger’s collapse, the move to Raleigh, his store’s quirks, what he misses about journalism, and whether he’d ever come back. We also played a game — I’ll let you find that part yourself.
This is exactly the kind of love, journalism story this show was built for.
