We spoke with Erin Cook of Dari Mulut ke Mulut, a publication covering news across Southeast Asia. Erin started her newsletter early in her career while working for a daily newspaper in Jakarta, Indonesia. After she found that broader regional news was lacking, she decided to expand her focus across the ASEAN region. We spoke to Erin about how international journalism has changed over the years, how independent writing helps her be more nimble as a reporter, and why it pays to have friends that tell you to charge more. Links Dari Mulut ke Mulut, Erin’s newsletter Indonesia, dll, Erin’s podcast, co-hosted with Hayat Indriyatno, about Indonesia Ayolah, Erin’s spinoff newsletter covering the Indonesian elections How Walt Hickey of Numlock News expanded to multiple newsletters Highlights (07:37) How international journalism is changing (14:29) Balancing newsletter writing, podcasting, and a weekly column (18:43) Finding and reporting on stories in low-coverage regions (25:29) How she grew her list (27:58) How she thinks about paid subscriptions (34:44) Starting a spinoff newsletter, Ayolah, to focus on the elections (37:21) Subscription pricing for an international audience On covering regions that are overlooked by newspapers: It's hard for the big mastheads to take a punt on a country like Laos or an issue like coronavirus in Laos. But for me, I already know that my audience is interested. They've signed up specifically for news on countries like Laos. So for me it's easy to sneak under the radar and I know people are interested, so it's a no-brainer for me. On the importance of building an audience before charging: ...you can't just be like, "I'm doing this and here's the paywall." No, you do have to establish that very quickly. And if you're someone like Matt Taibbi, he's got his credibility built in. But if you're someone like me, you've got to just hustle it out for a little bit longer than maybe you'd like to. Transcript Nadia: (00:35) You write a publication called Dari Mulut ke Mulut. Did I say that correctly? Erin: (00:40) Pretty close, yeah. Nadia: (00:41) - which is a shortcut to Southeast Asia, you report on news and analysis and features from across the region. Erin: (00:50) Yes. Nadia: (00:50) All right. I thought it was cool that you mentioned the meaning of your publication. Erin: (00:58) It's such a great term, it comes from Indonesia. And Indonesia has all these brilliant idioms. So Dari Mulut ke Mulut literally translates to, "From mouth to mouth," but it's used more as both word of mouth and gossip, so I thought it was perfect for what I was wanting to do. Nadia: (01:16) Yeah, I think it plays really well into this very conversational writing style which you have, which actually feels like someone is just learning from someone on the ground the gossip, but then with a deeper reporting lens. Erin: (01:27) Yeah, well, that's definitely the aim. Nadia: (01:30) It's coming across great. I’d love to hear just a little bit about your background and how you got here. I know you've had experience writing and covering the Southeast Asia region for a while. Erin: (01:40) Yeah, I started the newsletter very early on in the career, actually. I was initially, probably like a lot of Substack users, started off on a Tinyletter years ago. And I was working for, in Jakarta, one of the English daily newspapers there. And it was really interesting to be in what's probably one of the biggest cities in the world in such a fascinating region, and really struggling to find news from elsewhere within southeast Asia. So that inspired it, so I was just reporting on Indonesia, but there'd be all these links between Indonesia and Singapore or Malaysia or the Philippines. But you'd have to go to a Singapore news website to find out more about that aspect, or a Filipino news website to find