Jacob Clifton
Writer. Teacher. Strategist. Austin, TX. For fourteen years I wrote about television at Television Without Pity. Here’s what I’ve been doing since.
There’s a version of this sentence that has been true since 2000:
Some number of people on the internet have strong feelings about how Jacob Clifton thinks about television.
That number was once a million readers a week, back when Television Without Pity was the place where people went to find out what a show was actually doing — not just what happened, but why it mattered, and what it cost, and what it meant that you couldn’t look away. He was there for fourteen years. A lot of those readers are still here, thanks to Jacob Clifton’s unforgettable writing.
Since then Jacob’s had Gawker and Tribune Media editorships. A column for Reactor Magazine. The venerable Austin Chronicle.
And look now: A writing school-slash-coven. A Patreon. A collection of novellas. A card deck. A husband named Jason and two dogs who have opinions.
The work is the same work it always was.
The tools have just gotten better. And stranger.
Jacob Clifton is a writer, cultural critic, and teacher based in Austin, Texas. He spent fifteen years as a flagship staff writer at Television Without Pity — one of the most widely-read TV criticism sites of its era, reaching a million readers a week — and has held editorial roles at Gawker Media and Tribune Media. His criticism and essays have appeared at BuzzFeed andVulture, and he’s written columns for Tor.com/Reactor Magazine, the Austin Chronicle and the Discovery Channel.
Jacob is the founder of A Rough Trade Writing School, where he teaches creative writing, craft, and close reading. His novels, fiction, and nonfiction are available at the storefront, Stag + Birch. For content strategy, SEO writing, and editorial consulting, visit Clifton Creative.
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