Relaunching the Latin America Risk Report
More free content is coming your way
tl;dr: I’m sending this free newsletter four days per week for the next few months
Good morning from Bogota.
I’m James Bosworth, aka Boz. I’ve been blogging about Latin America since 2004, tweeting since 2009 and sending this newsletter since November 2018. Among other professional things (here’s my LinkedIn), I’m the founder of Hxagon, LLC, a political risk consulting firm, and I’m a Superforecaster with Good Judgment Inc.
This newsletter started as an experiment in late 2018, a followup to a project in which I tracked polling and politics during Mexico’s election. I’ve sent a free newsletter every Thursday for the past 20 months and grown my distribution list from 60 to 1,700 readers. There are over 100 paying subscribers.
Paying subscribers have always received additional content. The number of newsletters they receive has increased in recent months. Recently, I’ve been publishing three paid newsletters and one free newsletter every week.
Given the success of that content, I’ve decided to relaunch the newsletter and attempt to turn it into the main focus of my professional life. It’s a big step forward from the blog I started as a hobby in 2004.
What is changing? More free content!
Beginning on Monday, 17 August, everyone is going to receive for free the content that paying subscribers have been receiving. This newsletter is going to land in your inbox four days per week plus an open thread for Q&A and discussion on Fridays. I’ll be experimenting with different formats, but here is my initial plan for topics that you’ll see in the coming weeks:
Monday: Security
Tuesday: Corruption
Wednesday: Politics and Polls
Thursday: Wildcard (i.e. Coronavirus, economics, Latam and the world).
Friday: Open threads for comments and Q&A
I want this to be the best newsletter or blog you read about Latin America. I do not try to comprehensively write about every single thing in the region. Instead, I focus on topics on which I can add value with analysis, original reporting, or predictions about what will occur moving forward. I also aggregate links to the most interesting content that I read elsewhere on the internet.
To that end, your feedback matters. If you like a particular newsletter, please let me know by clicking the little “like” button at the top or by sending me an email. Also, I encourage you to forward the newsletters to your colleagues. If you dislike a newsletter, please feel free to email me and let me know what I could have done better.
Who reads this?
I have a diverse audience that includes business leaders, investors, private sector intelligence analysts, diplomats, policy makers, NGOs, journalists, academics, students, and some people who just like reading about Latin America.
One reason I’m sending more free content in the coming months is that I want more people to read it. If you know anyone who is interested in Latin America, please encourage them to enter their email at https://boz.substack.com/ to subscribe.
If I’m giving all this content away for free, why should you pay to subscribe?
On top of my time, I pay freelance journalists and analysts in Latin America to help me research specific issues and better understand the situation in each country. I’d like to do more original reporting in this newsletter in the coming months and that costs money. I prefer the subscription model to a model based on advertisements, which is why I’m writing on Substack.
I am giving all my current paying subscribers three months credit while I run this experiment. If you pay to subscribe before the end of September, I’ll give you three months of additional credit as well. Thanks to everyone who has supported this newsletter in the past and will support it in the future.
In a few months, I’ll go back to sending out some content exclusively to paying subscribers. At that time, I’ll encourage everyone to pay to subscribe, but will also continue to send one or two free newsletters per week. Until then, while I appreciate the support from anyone who chooses to pay, enjoy a few months of free content with no paywall.
Thanks for reading
Apologies for the meta-post about the newsletter, but I needed to make the announcement. On Monday at 11AM Bogota time I’ll be in your email inbox with information, analysis and interesting links.
Gracias y Saludos,
Boz