Next stop: Substack. (I swear this is the last illustration I AI generate)

Team Panini,

Before I get into the announcement, I just want to say: THANK YOU.

Yes, you.

I wasn't sure what would happen after Axios laid me off last year, but I asked folks to follow me here. Every notification I got of a new subscriber gave me a surge of desperately needed hope.

There are about 50 of you who regularly open this newsletter to keep up with my clips. And whether you're an Axios transplant or my mom, I'm so grateful.

Through this newsletter, you may have read the handful of freelance stories I wrote for Florida Politics and Creative Loafing. And you may have noticed the avalanche of Creative Loafing clips in it when I became CL's managing editor last spring.

If you're one of the few who actually click those stories, you might have noticed I didn't write a lot of them (though I touched most of them as an editor).

When Authory scrapes clips from cltampa.com looking for my byline, it doesn't recognize which clips are mine. I'm not sure if this can be fixed, but I've decided to make a bigger change.

I've started a Substack! 🎉

Made this in Canva with my blood, sweat, carpal tunnel, and tears.

I'm hoping you'll love the next phase of Hot off the Press from Selenie Panini.

Instead of a daily automated scraping of random CL clips, I'll send a weekly email curated with my stories that I actually want you to read—along with the recommendations many of you loved and missed from the bottom of my Axios newsletters!

And, of course, it'll still be free.

Good news: You're already subscribed! I hope you don't mind, but I moved my Authory email list over to make the switch as easy as possible.

But before I officially move over, I want to give you a sneak peek at that big news mentioned in my Substack banner.

I wrote a book!

It's a nonfiction narrative about my time at The Capital and what it means to survive in every sense of the word.

After two and a half years working on it in NYU's low-residency MFA program (hence the many trips to Paris), I'm excited to say I graduated last month with a finished first draft and a literary agent.

I talked about the process of writing the book and getting my agent in an interview for Query Tracker. Some of it is in the weeds for authors also seeking book agents, but I hope you still enjoy it.

When there's more news about it in the months to come, you'll be one of the first to know.

Thanks for reading!!!

Selene

Home

Resume

Hot off the Press is moving! Plus, some big news.