Flavorpill's online newsletters succeed by filtering cultural news, not blogging with it.

Sascha Lewis and Mark Mangan founded Flavorpill.com in late 2000 (fresh out of a dot-bomb retail site) with a handful of contributors and a few hundred New York City subscribers. Now Flavorpill has more than 300 contributors around the world, a core staff of 40 on the payroll, and five editions of its weekly online newsletters covering cultural events in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and London.

They now also publish four, non-geographic-specific online publications covering music, fashion, books, and art.

All the publications are free, and international readership recently topped 200,000.

Lewis and Mangan's success flies in the face of the blogging phenomenon. They're young ("I am the oldest of the bunch at 35," Sascha told us) and new to the newsletter business, but they've taken the old-fashioned newsletter mission of scanning the news and giving their readers only the best of what they uncover, succinctly.

Or in their words, "In a media-saturated world, our magazines* filter the happenings around us to provide smart, concise content about quality events, music news, fashion trends, good books, and international art."

Great press and top advertisers

The April 10 New York Times Sunday magazine gave a full page to Flavorpill. Rob Walker's "Consumed" column was headed, "Narrowcasting Nightlife: A Web-based newsletter acts as a culture filter for the entertainment-info overloaded."

Sascha Lewis said that the article was so positive that "it looked as if we paid for it."

The piece describes one Flavorpill reader whose words any newsletter publisher would cherish as a testimonial. Walker writes, "But what he mostly likes about Flavorpill is that it is a fast read. There are only about two dozen items per issue. This intense winnowing of the practically limitless number of entertainment options to the big-city dweller is precisely the point of of Flavorpill. Often the approach in giving consumers choices is to give them as many as possible--particularly on the web, where sprawling troves of data are prized. But here the strategy is just the opposite: to act as a filter."

Lewis told us that they started out "self-funded, with a little help from relatives and friends." Asked how they make money, he said, "We have an exclusive media partner for every issue of the nine newsletters."

That translates to just one advertiser per issue, "which conveys its message to our readers via engaging, graphical dividers which run the length of the issue.

"Since we exclusively integrate the creative into the design of each publication, we call this form of advertising a media partnership."

Lewis said, somewhat modestly, "Flavorpill is a good vehicle for reaching the creative class." Advertisers constitute a Madison Avenue dream: The New York Times, BMW, Audi, Absolut, Sony, American Express, Nike, Reebok, Puma, Diesel, Random House, and Heineken.

Editorial accentuates the postive

Mangan said their guiding spirit is enthusiasm--"people who go out, in a city they really love, heartily endorsing events for others like them ... We don't say bad things. There's so much good culture that's under the radar."

Rob Walker writes, "And while this attitude generates a lot of lobbying from event-givers of all sorts, he insists that the recommendations are pure--nothing is paid or traded for."

Walker also notes, "The occasional 'iconic' event, like the New York City Marathon, also makes the list. 'We don't want to be esoteric," Mangan says. 'We don't want to be hip.' But, of course, there is no hipper statement than that, and it's likely that Flavorpill has a devoted following not just because of its enthusiasm but also because the e-mail format lends a vaguely secretive, in-the-know vibe."

Flavorpill, 594 Broadway, #1212, New York, NY 10012, 212-253-9309, www.flavorpill.com

* Flavorpill alternately uses the terms magazine and newsletter to describe its editorial products. Sascha Lewis told us on the phone--almost apologetically, considering the name of the publication interviewing him--that they prefer magazine because it denotes a "meatier" publication.

We beg to differ. Magazines spell glitz and advertising and Newsletters spell information.

But we also sadly acknowledge that millions of forgettable online despatches sent out under the name of newsletter have devalued the word in many quarters.