DAILY SKIMM
“The friendliest way to start the day informed, as long as you have eight minutes rather than five.”
1,893 WORDS MEDIAN · ARRIVES 3:10 AM PT
Subscribe to the Daily Skimm if you want the day's news in a voice that assumes you are busy, not stupid: plain language, real context, and a tone that makes a grim news cycle survivable. Skip it if you want depth on any single story, or if you actually only have five minutes.
| Price | Free |
|---|---|
| Paid tier | None for this newsletter; theSkimm sells a membership and other products separately |
| Cadence | Every morning, plus a separate weekend edition on Fridays |
| Arrives | 3:10 a.m. Pacific / 6:10 a.m. Eastern (median of 25 issues) |
| Read time | 7 to 8 minutes at an ordinary reading pace |
| Length | 1,893 words median (754 to 2,303 across our sample) |
| Emails / week | About 8: one each morning, with a second on Fridays |
| Ads per issue | One named sponsor in 60% of issues, plus affiliate links and the occasional labelled sponsored post |
| Publisher | theSkimm; the issue's copyright line reads Everyday Health, Inc. |
| Founded | 2012 |
| Readership | 10 million+, self-reported on theskimm.com |
| Ad model | Named per-issue sponsor, affiliate commissions disclosed in the footer, and sponsored posts marked as such |
Who should read Daily Skimm?
The Daily Skimm reaches a claimed 10 million-plus readers, which makes it one of the largest general-news emails in the country. It is written for people who want to be informed without making the news a hobby.
You want to know what happened and why it matters before your first meeting, in language that never assumes you followed yesterday's version.
If headlines have become unbearable, this is the gentlest on-ramp in the category. It is warm without being weightless.
If you need depth in one field, this is the wrong shape. Read it for breadth and get your depth from a beat writer who covers your corner.
What you actually get, in order
The running order is remarkably consistent. Across our 25 issues the same furniture appeared in the same places, which is a large part of why it reads quickly even at 1,900 words.
Why it's one of the best in its category
The story so far
theSkimm launched in 2012, built by two NBC News producers who noticed that smart, busy people were quietly falling out of the news habit because every product assumed you had already been paying attention. The Daily Skimm answered that with a voice: explain the thing from the beginning, in the language a friend would use, and never make the reader feel behind.
That voice turned into one of the largest email audiences in American media, a self-reported ten million-plus readers, and a template that a decade of daily briefings has borrowed from. The company expanded into a membership, apps and books, but the free morning email has stayed the front door.
What our sample shows is a newsletter that has grown up rather than grown thin. The issues are longer than the brand promise implies, the sponsorship is more present than it once was, and the editorial craft is still visibly there: real writers, a fact-checker, and the same patient translation of a hard story into plain words.