Jacob Clifton | Cultural Critic, Author & Writing Teacher | Jacob Clifton | Cultural Critic, Author & Writing Teacher

Jacob A. Clifton Writer. Teacher. Strategist. Austin, TX.

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.

Since then: Gawker. Tribune Media. Tor.com. The Austin Chronicle. A writing school. 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 stranger and better.

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 Tor.com/Reactor, the Austin Chronicle, BuzzFeed, Vulture, and Science and Discovery Channel. He 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 through his Gumroad storefront. For content strategy, SEO writing, and editorial consulting, visit the portfolio.