MEDIA DIET
By:
November 6, 2026
A weekly series exploring the media “input” of a group of people — HILOBROW’s friends and contributors — whose “output” we admire.
Jessamyn has been a valued HILOBROW contributor since 2013. Her first post was on the topic of UNFASHIONABLE LIBRARIES. Her most recent contributions to this publication include: THE MARS TRILOGY | THE POST OFFICE | HYRAX.
Vermont…
I’m a librarian and tech person and while I’d love to say that I’m thoughtful about what media I take in, there’s a huge amount of randomness to all of it. At the same time, there are some basic groupings. I love music and I often have some playing. I’m often not particular about what kind of music it is, though I can’t listen to music with lyrics when I am writing.
My partner is a musician and one of the things we love to talk about is music. He perceives it very differently from me, a non-musician. I think of this when I talk to people about the ways I interact with social media, or Wikipedia, or the dozens of mailing lists that I’m on. I view a lot of media as participatory, as part of a conversation.
HILOBROW: What forms of media do you “take in” the most regularly/frequently, during a typical day or week?
JESSAMYN WEST: I’m never sure where the line is in terms of what is media and what is communication. I have a few general “chunks” of media that I interact with
- Longform reads — usually books but sometimes just hefty articles. These are things that I read while doing nothing else except maybe listening to music.
- Light reads — this can range from skimming social media to looking over news headlines, getting a sense of topics but maybe not looking too deeply. Good for getting a sense of the zeitgeist, with a lot of jumping around.
- TV-type shows — at night I usually unwind with some series-based scifi or mystery show. Regular as clockwork; I end a day of multitasking by unitasking. A few shows like Taskmaster I catch up on when Jim’s in town.
- Music — I’m usually listening to music when I’m doing the seemingly endless admin which comes with a lot of the work that I do. I have a few dozen playlists I like, and sometimes I’ll listen to streaming chillhop on YouTube.
- Podcasts — I listen to two podcasts — No Such Thing As A Fish, Taskmaster — either on walks or while doing the dishes.
- Social media — more on this below
- Mail — I like to send and receive mail.
I don’t use Spotify or any other music streaming service. All my music is either mine or it’s free online.
HILOBROW: What are your reading habits?
JESSAMYN WEST: Book reading bookends my day. When I’m up in the morning having coffee I usually read non-fiction for a while before I do anything online, either on the porch or in my cozy chair. Right now I’m reading Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday Life by Judy Attfield which is on the dense side for me but I tend to go back and forth between light and heavy non-fiction. I also read for about an hour after I’ve put my phone away at night, when I’m in bed. I’m reading a book in a series of lightly-paranormal cop procedurals called the Rivers of London series. Not too heavy.
When the weather is right and I’m in an especially reading-forward mood, I’ll check out a few graphic novels and read in the afternoon on my porch. The last graphic novel I read was Tenements, Towers & Trash by Julia Wertz, a great graphic look at some of the history of New York City. Other than graphic novels, I usually alternate between print and ebook format, I’m not particular.
HILOBROW: How do you use social media, these days?
JESSAMYN WEST: Other than the many group chats/Slacks that I’m in, I post on Bluesky (mostly librarian content and interacting with other library workers) and Mastodon (nerd stuff, accessibility stuff, and also interacting with more people I know in real life). I check Facebook because it’s what local people use, so it’s sort of necessary for knowing what’s up in my rural town. I sometimes use Instagram to watch stand-up comedy clips and find out about new comics. My local friends and I sometimes swap goofy memes that we find there. I made a searchable backup of my personal Twitter account so I don’t go there anymore and I never really took to TikTok.
I’m a block-early-and-often person and I’m mostly talking about library stuff, so I have a decent time on social media most of the time.
MEDIA DIET series: MATTHEW BATTLES | ADRIENNE CREW | HOLLY INTERLANDI | CAROLYN KELLOGG | MARK KINGWELL | FLOURISH KLINK | ADAM McGOVERN | CHARLIE MITCHELL | TOM NEALON | ANNIE NOCENTI | GARY PANTER | LYNN PERIL | JONATHAN PINCHERA | NICHOLAS ROMBES | CARLO ROTELLA | LUCY SANTE | SETH | MIKE WATT | JUDITH ZISSMAN | & many others! Visit the SERIES INDEX.