Plex PatternsAn Update
Author: Peter Kaminski Issue: 2025-06-18
Plex Patterns–An Update
by Peter Kaminski
Charles Blass and I talked about “Plex Patterns” in Plex: 3 April 2024.
After 80 issues now of publishing the Biweekly Plex Dispatch, I want to revisit some of the patterns I use while I’m assembling and publishing Plex. Here are the consistent patterns that have emerged:
Patterns
Purpose & Vision
- A focus on “intercommunity”
- Community journalism
Content Strategy
- Asking members of communities for updates
- Author attribution, emphasizing a collaborative publication
- Different kinds of stories: personal reflections/essays, photo essays, poetry, conversations/interviews, travel reports, technical discussions
- A mix of text stories and images or videos
- One long issue
Publishing Operations
- Publishing twice a month
- Use Ghost or Substack to provide both email and web versions
- Having a paid tier and a free tier, with same article access
Evolution
Overall, I’m reasonably happy with Plex, but there are also some things that I can see evolving:
- Instead of “Asking members of communities for updates,” I think it might be better to have dedicated “beat reporters” that provide more consistent reporting and storytelling. This could lead to deeper, more sustained coverage of communities, rather than occasional updates.
- “One long issue” is nice to create the feel of a periodically published newsletter, but we sorely miss directly linking to individual pieces (hi, Jerry!). I’d also love to integrate with Massive Wiki, NeoBooks, Bluesky, and Mastodon.
- Plex has used only Ghost since its inception. Ghost is a great platform, and it’s consistently getting even better. I also really value that Ghost is open source, so there’s a self-hosting option. However, Substack has continued to develop strong subscriber growth strategies, and I wonder if Plex should take advantage of that. I’m intrigued by Anna Burgess Yang’s approach in “I Publish on Substack, Ghost, and Kit. Here’s Why”—she uses each platform’s strengths while maintaining her content across all three.
- Jack Park is inspired by Plex to think of building a new kind of social network around it—addressing the challenge of making intercommunity connections more interactive and persistent.
- Jordan Sukut imagines Plex patterns being used to build a decentralized, distributed news network that also gently encourages more participation and engagement. One of the things that hasn’t worked as well with Plex as I’ve wanted is the idea of “intercommunity.” I wonder if decentralized Plex nodes should center more on intra-community news, with informal syndication sometimes between nodes–perhaps that’s a better way to do “intercommunity” by building strong local nodes first.
If you find this kind of brainstorming interesting, join us as we think more! Send me an email: kaminski@istori.com.
Related:
- Peter Kaminski (author)
- 2025 (year)
- Topics: Community Building, Media and Communication, Tools and Platforms, Narrative and Storytelling