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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

It's questionable whether a lot of substack writers give you more quality access than the entire newsroom at the NYT, WSJ, or similar newspapers, where a lot of substack writers still contribute.

I think the high fees on substack, like on patreon have another reason. It creates a weird parasocial relationship between the creator and the reader that gives the reader the feeling that they have contributed to a cause, or has some personal relationship with the author they support, and so on.

In that way it seems to me more similar to twitch streamers who often extract huge sums of money from their donors, when objectively the viewer gets more content out of a 10$ streaming subscription.

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I would pay more for a subset of the current NYT. The website is full of imo prominently displayed clickbait that I consider negative value.

I'm a previous subscriber of NYT and Bloomberg online. I've kept my WSJ subscription partly because its easier to consume only the useful content.

I also subscribe to a couple of email lists where the author absolutely provides value in their niche over and above the larger newsrooms. They are usually great complements to each other and it tells you something that the journalists are also reading the newsletters.

I feel the same way. I stopped my NYT subscription because of "native ads"... Aka, paid advertising content posing as a news story by the outlet. I will not support deceitful ad placement. Subscriptions or ads. Pick one. No native ads.

> The website is full of imo prominently displayed clickbait that I consider negative value.

When checking the New York Times, I prefer to look at the "Today's Paper" list of headlines, it's much easier to parse and less clickbaity: https://www.nytimes.com/section/todayspaper

Same for the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/todays_paper/updates/

It is also questionable whether the newsroom @ NYT, WSJ give much quality to begin with.

That being said, there is value depending on what topics you're interested in. The value of NYT for me is the Arts & culture section. But I'd happily pay for Matt Stoller's content,Taibbi, Siskin or Gwern if he had one.

There is risk that's been highlighted of creating bubbles but seeing how news media has reinvented itself over the last decade, I can't see how that can be avoided, except this bubble is self-curated and more specific, which one can argue is better.

[Edit: clarification on last line]

Gwern has a Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/gwern

And a Substack for his newsletter: https://gwern.substack.com/ (AFAIK this is free though)

It also depends on the subject. For instance, there's an ex journalist in my country pulling in €20K/month on Patreon by making videos on corruption in the country. It resonates well with the audience which doesn't seem to be able to get similar content from the newspapers/TV channels. There are some random writings on Substack,but there are also those that aren't covered much in more popular media, which leaves a gap and some writers are happy to fill it.

They get different content.

Nowhere on that streaming content is someone explaining the intricacies of speedrunning The Legend Of Zelda (as a simple example.) It turns out there may only be a couple thousand people in the world really that interested in that content, and only a few hundred willing to pay for it. The economy of scale thee changes the calculus of how much you are willing to pay.

Good example.

> t turns out there may only be a couple thousand people in the world really that interested in that content,

As evidenced by the success of SummoningSalt's youtube channel

> It creates a weird parasocial relationship between the creator and the reader

This is honestly a troubling trend in my opinion. These parasocial relationship are sort of emergent based on these new creator->fan direct channels that are popping up.

I'm concerned that now these platforms are going to lean into this even more, encouraging this sort of thing instead of it just happening organically.

These relationships are really not healthy for people. Not for the creator (even though they profit from it) and absolutely not for the fans who are likely missing out on forming real relationships with real people in favor of this parasocial thing that will ultimately not be fulfilling (and expensive) for them.

I wouldn't worry too much about it. A mailing list is usually a means to an end. Most people writing on Substack are also writing a book manuscript behind the scenes, because that's a reliable way to monetize one's following.

It's a different type of relationship if you're a 'personality' on Twitch or IG, and your audiovisual presence is what gets people to follow you. Books don't monetize nearly as well, and a lot of the people in this area don't really have anything to write about. So they pitch what they can: energy drinks, mattresses, Audible subscriptions.

One of the big things that strikes me about these journalists who leave their papers or start a side gig on Substack is the marked decrease in the quality of their writing. The role of the copy-editor is extremely important.

Which is why it's so frustrating that the NYT laid off most of theirs.

They're also managing the business side of things directly, which can be very time consuming when you're getting started.

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