Adam Shuck is a news junkie’s news junkie. Every weekday lunch hour, he shoots an email to thousands of subscribers telling them what they should be reading about the city he loves.

That city would be Pittsburgh. Mr. Shuck, 29, moved to Lawrenceville from Brooklyn five years ago. There, he was an insatiable consumer of culture. Here, he’s found the breathing room to be one of its creators.

He spends hours each morning compiling what he’s liked or despised from various media in the previous 24 hours. He sends it all out, at no charge, in one 3,000-word package with Internet links under the heading “Eat That, Read This.’’

Pittsburgh magazine just named Mr. Shuck one of 15 Future Power Brokers for being “a must-read among members of the city’s power set — if only to ensure that they weren’t among the day’s targets.’’

I met Mr. Shuck at one of his favored haunts, Hambone’s on Butler Street, where they have his favorite beer — Big Hop from East End Brewing — and enough privacy for a mid-afternoon talk about the “crazy company’’ that Pittsburgh magazine has him in.

He’s honored, even if there’s something odd about me interviewing him after another publication lauded him for commenting on media such as mine. It seemed an eternal loop, and perhaps eternally loopy, like that maiden on the Land O’Lakes butter logo holding a butter box picturing herself holding a butter box ad infinitum.

When I told him as much, he nodded and said, “The Droste effect.”

Sure enough, when I looked it up, that is the term for a picture appearing within itself. It’s that kind of casual comprehensiveness that has seen his newsletter’s audience grow from a few friends to a virtual Heinz Hall sellout in little more than a year.

Mr. Shuck’s people are subscriber-only and he likes it that way. “Eat That, Read This” began in June 2014 when he was an administrator at the University of Pittsburgh Humanities Center, a job he’d leave May 1 to focus on the newsletter. He’s currently trying to grow the concept into a blog with other collaborators.

Scanning the news always was a pastime, and it meshes nicely with an obsession with all things Pittsburgh. “There’s no sleeping in” as he powers through the occasional Friday morning hangovers to make sure he meets his self-imposed deadline of 12:30 p.m. 

He works without a net; there’s no copy editor to save him from mistakes, and when he hits “send’’ it can’t be taken back.

His 255th newsletter Friday led with this:

“Straight people around the country are clutching their pearls and holding their breath for the rolling exposures of some 37 million email addresses from the hack of Canadian extramarital affairs site Ashley Madison . . . Locally, the Peduto administration confirmed that ‘a review determined four city email accounts used Ashley Madison.’

“Lol are y’all serious?! You used your work emails?!”

Mr. Shuck leans hard to the left with no apology. He sees himself as more aggregator/editor than writer, consciously trying to push Pittsburgh in directions he favors. Though he says he has great respect for journalists, he doesn’t think the rigid style allows enough context.

So if he thinks a city council member is stupid, he says so, with flair. He once worked for Councilwoman Natalia Rudiak, so he knows the Grant Street players and it bothers him that so many in his peer group don’t know diddly about local issues. 

Yes, many of those who pat themselves on the back for having a New York Times subscription, or being able to quote the latest “Last Week Tonight’’ bit from John Oliver, couldn’t name their city council member or state rep. If you’re one of those people living your life as a perpetual tourist, Mr. Shuck may be the snarkmeister for you.

Even as he fans it, he’s ambivalent about the Internet comment culture, where he finds some of the best and worst thinking.

“There’s something about the nature of the comments section that it can get toxic very quickly.’’

Yeah, when the Post-Gazette launched PG Feed, our own weekday noontime newsletter, the snarks circled quickly. That’s just the nature of the beast.

His is not a calling that would have been possible a generation ago, but it suits Mr. Shuck.

“If I had to put one word on my tombstone, I think ‘critical’ would be the word.’’

Brian O’Neill: boneill@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1947.

First Published: August 23, 2015, 4:00 a.m.