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Grudging respect for AI ... maybe, plus trailblazing women in media & copy resource of the week

Author

Kimberly Houston
May 11, 2025

Hey, hi, howdy, and welcome to Issue #42 of The Subhead, a bi-weekly newsletter about copywriting, marketing & media, and a look at some of the women who make it great.

In today’s edition:

✨ This week in freelancing

✨ Trailblazing Women in Media: Alicia Kennedy

✨ Copy Resource of the Week: Taglines: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

✨ Just for Fun

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This week in freelancing

This week I completed an article about the use of AI in performance reviews* for my software client, started the next article for said client on Survey Rating Scales, and worked on an article for my healthcare client about everybody’s favorite – PMS symptoms. 

 *I’m very much not an AI cheerleader by any stretch of the imagination, but researching and writing this article gave me a new-found grudging respect for some of the things AI can do. Of course, those things definitely do not, and will never, include the actual writing part. 😊

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Trailblazing Women in Media: Alicia Kennedy

Alicia Kennedy’s newsletter, From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, featuring essays, criticism, and interviews on food, culture, and media, goes out weekly to over 41,000 subscribers.

I discovered Kennedy via an interview she did with Creator Spotlight, one of my favorite sources for finding new folks to follow/read/learn more about, where her work is described as “rigorous and critical, using food and culture as lenses to prod at larger, systemic social trends.”

One of the things I particularly love about the Creator Spotlight interview is how Kennedy puts her stake in the ground and declares herself a writer, not a “creator.”

She supports herself as a freelancer, independent newsletter writer, and author, and says, “For me, when you take on the label of creator, you're more saying that you're making content, obviously, and that content is being shared and owned by these platforms where you have no control over anything.” (Check out the Creator Spotlight interview to find out more about her thoughts on the limitations of the creator economy.)

Kennedy’s work has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, the Washington Post, the Guardian, Vogue, Lux, and the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Food Studies. Her first book, No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating was published in 2023.

Kennedy’s second book, On Eating: The Making and Unmaking of My Appetites, a memoir of food and place, is forthcoming from Hachette Books in April 2026.

You can check out some of Kennedy’s essays and culture writing here.

You can learn more about Kennedy at the inline links above, and / or check out:

Her website.

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Copy Resource of the Week: Taglines: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Ah, the tagline … that short phrase next to your logo in your website header (or somewhere nearby) that helps site visitors identify what you do and who you do it for.  

(While taglines can exist for other purposes, I’m specifically referring to website taglines here.)

And I’ve got two excellent articles for you today that will help you create your own website tagline. You’ll also find a few great tagline examples, along with others that miss the mark. (Because Real! Live! Examples! are so dang helpful.)

But first, a brief note on why website taglines matter:

Taglines are especially important online for a couple of reasons: the enormous competition on the web in nearly every category of thing out there, and the fact that you’ve got just 2-7 seconds (and some experts say, 2 seconds, period) to catch someone’s attention.

In a sea of multiple competing sites that sell the same kind of products or services you sell, you must do something to stand out and get the attention of your ideal buyers quickly, convey that they’re in the right place, and let them know you have what they need. A good tagline can help you do that.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk about the importance of taglines!

And now, your copy resource(s) for this week:

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Just for Fun

Auburn University’s help desk is still answering the public’s calls 70 years on

This is a delightful story about the James E. Foy Information Desk at Auburn University, where every day from 7 am to 11 pm Central Standard Time, students working at the help desk answer all manner of questions, including:

“If you died on the operating table and they declared you legally dead and wrote out a death certificate and everything, but then you came back to life, what are the legal ramifications? Do you technically no longer exist? Do you have to be declared undead by a judge?”

Or …

“Who is the most famous person in the world?” 

Or …

“How do you get the Super Serum in Call of Duty?”

You might wonder, as I did, why don’t people just Google the answers to these questions?

It’s because, according to the article:

“About 13 million people in the US and 2.6 billion people globally don’t use the internet, whether for reasons of availability, desire, cost, or religion. Some may have it but don’t feel confident using it. To their callers, who dial from all over the world, these students are the internet. And lucky for callers, these students are remarkably non-judgmental when it comes to the questions they’re asked.”

The entire article is a joy to read, a balm in these terrifying times.

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That’s it for this week, my friend.

As always, thanks for reading, I appreciate you!

Be well. Stay curious. See you again in two weeks, on May 25.

Warmly,

Kimberly