Why We’re Freaking Out About Substack
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I highly recommend this post from ferddie de boer https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/its-all-just-displaceme...
Substack makes a big difference because those “10x” journalist no longer need to be tied to an outlet.
EDIT: I guess some people think this a controversial take, hence all the down votes.
I've gotta say, I agree with lots of what he's saying about journalism nowadays. The whole article about journalists using the language of victimhood [0] to protect themselves really struck a nerve. I've seen this attitude and behaviour first-hand.
Commercial journalism is a mess, and getting messier. The business model is broken, and journalism is trashing what's left of its reputation trying to save it. I don't know if Substack is the answer. It might just be the final nail in the coffin. But something has to replace this mess.
[0] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/journalists-attack-the-powe...
Here you go.
Link is to about page because I cannot remember for the life of me what is members only and what is not. They’ve got reports, fact checks, morning newsletters, weekly newsletters, podcasts (which are all non-member accessible), and guest pieces.
“ We don’t apologize for our conservatism. Some of the best journalism is done when the author is honest with readers about where he or she is coming from, and some of the very worst journalism hides behind a pretense of objectivity and the stolen authority that pretense provides.”
Aptly describes my exact problem with most “news” publishers: they’re less than upfront and honest about their own biases and everyone has them, and it shapes the institution’s biases as a whole.
The meat and potatoes is the Morning Dispatch and Weekly Dispatch, but they also publish opinion pieces. You’re not always going to agree, just as I don’t always agree, but you asked. Check it out or don’t.
The Dispatch has had a custom domain since they launched at the tail end of 2019.
If I thought it existed, I would be in your shoes right now. My compromise with reality is to prefer publications which are upfront, honest and generally reasonable as determined by the body of their work, not one headline found on Google.
They do reporting, they do opinions, they do newsletter and podcasts which mix both. I can live with that as long as I know where they’re coming from, what their scope is, and as long as they’re not pretending to be something they’re not.
Having read The Morning and Weekly Dispatches from the beginning, I haven’t been disappointed. I also enjoy the G-File and Vital Interests (both part of the Dispatch). Based off your preferences, you might actually enjoy Vital Interests if you are interested in foreign policy, but I can say for certain that you probably don’t want the G-File because that is unapologetic political wonkery, and to Jonah’s credit, he doesn’t sell that as anything but what it is.
That’s one of the nice things about old-style publications: they try to offer some variety and don’t mix reporting with opinion pages.
So to repeat my recommendation: check out The Dispatch, specifically check out the Morning Dispatch, the Weekly Dispatch, maybe Vital Interests.
It might not be your cup of tea, or it might.
Don’t expect a response before 6PM Pacific, I’ll try to get back to you sooner than that, I’m still working right now.
But there is a level of this that is impossible, which is avoiding prioritizing some aspects and not others. Merely choosing what to put in a headline vs first paragraph vs 5th paragraph is making a subjective decision about what is most important.
Even more subjective is choice of words for complex phenomena that defy simple summary. For example, were the activities of last summer protests, or were they riots? Most people have an opinion on which word is a better fit, but there is no way to deny that both have a basis in objective fact. So, writers choose one or the other depending on their own biases and what they want to emphasize.
Finally, there is the "file drawer" source of bias, which is simply not covering some things that you don't think are important. You're not lying or misinforming anyone, but you are making a subjective decision about what people should be thinking about.
I personally think it's best if a publication is open about how it's going to be making these various subjective decisions. And I think it's dishonest for someone to claim their news reporting can be purely objective.
You’re going to see a lot of this with the nursing home scandal in New York over the next few months.
This was something really common throughout spygate.
On the other hand being able to subscribe to specific quality writers and not sponsor the package deal with crap included (reminds me of cable packages) feels great.
This isn't meant to say that you won't really. (You may say that I do — I've subscribed to a staid broadsheet for most of my life and get a thick wad of paper delivered every morning.) It's meant to make you ask the question of yourself. Do you want something that'll get that pass, do you want those clueful commentators, or what do you want? ("Want" so much as to pay for it.)
For me at least Substack presents a solid wall with very little to help discovery. Who do I subscribe to and why? The website is awful at showing me interesting writing. Right now they seem heavily reliant on the writer already having a platform and there is no opportunity for serendipitous discovery.
I've also got the sinking feeling that it won't reduce the proliferation of low quality content for clicks because that business model is perfectly feasible in the subscription world. It might even speed it up as people gravitate towards paying for content that they agree with or tickles them.
I'm also concerned about what this paywalled, atomisation of information and ideas does to society. Looking at the subscription rates it looks very expensive to maintain a rounded view or even to subscribe to more than a handful of writers. If we're going to complain about newspapers and journalism losing their way (in a value to society sense) does the model of Substack actually fix it or is it just a way for a minority of writers to find financial success?
This is by design, because if they did recommend "controversial" people, they'd be accused of being a [bad thing.]
If they actively recommend anyone, they will end up recommending people that are controversial to some groups, and they will be attacked as curators and 'platformers' of these people.
"At the same time, while we take a hands-off approach with who may use the platform, we will continue to take an active approach in helping and promoting promising writers. We are doing this by improving discovery on the platform and building programs, such as fellowships, grants, and mentorship, to support writers. Our partnerships team will also continue to work with high-revenue and high-potential writers."
So I'm not sure this claim about avoiding recommendations is actually true.
If they can say that for YouTube, why not for Substack if it implements similar discoverability?
Agree. One of the functions of major news outlets in the past was to be gatekeepers, but in a good sense: they would not countenance a journalist going off on flat earth conspiracy theories, for example, because their editorial process filters out stuff like that. Of course there are the negative aspects of gatekeeping; nothing's perfect.
Substack will likely see the day, if it hasn't happened already, where a content creator is pushing bogus information and Substack will come under public scrutiny. It's another variation on the 8chan situation: if you allow anyone to publish, you're gonna get a lot of illegal or harmful content.
Also as in those other industries, nobody knows what will be a hit until they're well on their way up, so a thriving business needs to be willing to experiment.
/s
The legacy media companies are freaking out because they sold themselves out. Instead of creating value by writing high quality, factual investigative or informative pieces, they tried to extract as much of the existing value as possible by writing terrible, anti-factual lies or gossip pieces (which are cheap).
They have now run out of value to extract. So they’re freaking out.
On the other hand: people on substack are in the value creation phase. Consumers see this and give them money for the value that they are creating.
You joke, but I think people on substack might do this eventually -- there is something to be gained from banding together, and as soon as substack has some sort of "groups" feature I'm sure we'll see some alignment/clustering.
What would be even more interesting to me is if Substack actually started offering print versions of certain mailing lists for people who move slower. Has anyone commoditized publishing infrastructure yet? Could someone create infinitely remixable and customizable magazines?
<< I’m a blogging dinosaur, which makes me a little sad about the rise of Substack. Back in the day, the virtue of blogging was that everyone could talk to everyone. Later, when many bloggers (including me) went to work for magazines, our work was still freely available. We could link back and forth and our readers always had the option of clicking those links if they wanted more details or just wanted to check and make sure we were quoting each other fairly.
I’m not really willing to rack up a whole bunch of $60-per-year subscription fees for individual writers, which means I’ll never know what they’re saying. And even if I did, you’d never know what they’re saying unless you’re coincidentally a subscriber too. This means we have a growing circle of writers who are influencing the political conversation but doing it semi-privately. The rest of us will only get hints here and there, the way you might have heard snatches of gossip from acquaintances who had been invited to an 18th century salon. >>
[0] https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/11/is-the-substa...
You could aggregate writers within a niche to get a full view of that area. Or you could aggregate across topics to get something approaching a traditional newspaper.
Even even better: writers get paid with fewer middlemen, and writers can get paid proportionally to their work's readership.
The downside: sometimes the pooled model helps subsidize writers who do important work, but perhaps work that is insufficiently popular to attract paid readers...who funds that type of investigative journalism?
A good analogy might be a university - the EMBA, CS, Applied Sciences departments end up subsidizing the humanities departments. This is good. Classics are important. So is literature.
I know news organizations like to claim they unselfishly use their money to do God's Work.
And I know some of that happened. But I also know people like to exaggerate their civic mindedness.
It's super hard for people to internalize that they actually don't care about stuff, what they care about is their appearance. The people making real impacts are non or not for profit organizations that battle corporations in court and sue them for things like pollution. Journalists are worthless.
I'll just tell you why I won't pay for this, but would pay for something like the NY Times or my local newspaper. I care to know what's going on, in general. I'm not a new junky, but I read headlines from a bunch of different places, and sometimes the entire article. Paying for a place with original reporting on a bunch of different topics appeals to me. What's that old saying, a mile wide and an inch deep? That works for me.
Paying to read one person write about one topic... not so much. I already get a bunch of free newsletters from a bunch of different people on a bunch of different platforms. Someone would have to be REALLY special for me to pay to read their emails. I can't imagine there's more than one person like that.
That's just me, of course, there's probably enough people out there that are willing to pay for a bunch of special emails to keep substack going.
Then, when I want someone's take on something, from someone I trust, I get it from substack. Eg. Matthew Yglesias on policy, Noah Smith on finance/economics, etc.
In contrast, most big newspapers seem to me to be pushing opinion masked as fact. They never actually lie, but they are selective in what they represent and imply connections where there are none.
I still read NY Times as my default. They have a lot more soft news than they used to but their reporting is still top notch. They've taken a turn for being more direct in their language and not tap-dancing around political double-speak but I think it's appropriate. My other go-to is NPR and local NPR affiliates.
The huge players (Sullivan, Taibbi, Greenwald, etc) may be able to continue on their own, but I just don't think there will be enough revenue for every journalist to make a good living with a personal substack.
I wonder how you'll find out about stuff you didn't know you needed to care about. I feel like this approach pushes us all deeper into our in-groups and away from a larger sense of community.
I also wonder what will be lost in terms of collaboration and oversight.
Hacker News
Who decides “what I need to care about”? The editors of NYTimes? I remember when they decided we needed to worry about WMDs in Iraq.
The major media businesses have built their business models around catering to in-groups. And collaboration and oversight within these organizations is focused on shaping (even policing) content for their target audience.
The eclectic tastes of individual writers - without the oversight and peer pressure - seem less likely to rigidly cater to a particular in-group.
There is a lot of commentary on the news, but the news itself still comes from elsewhere.
I haven't seen 'A bomb went off in xxx today, as such and such claimed responsibility,' if that's what you mean by news but frankly that comes from the AP Wire for most traditional news organizations as well
The big name bloggers and journalists were competing in an industry where entry level salaries are dirt cheap, because from a business perspective "anyone" can do journalism and there are always more people to hire. But what readers actually "want" isn't the generic journalism, it's Yglesias or Greenwald specifically. So people like that can do much better.
But... where does that leave the actual journalism? Now not only are the journalists underpaid by the media, they now know that the path to elite success is actually in a different career path entirely. I can't help but think that Substack is the wrong solution to a real problem, and is making things worse and not better.
With blogs that's been happening gradually over the intervening years, but now it's accelerating. I think it's a great thing that the editorial intermediaries are being circumvented. Those writers I enjoy can speak more freely, while enjoying a larger slice of the rewards (along with the risks) at the same time. So I'm more basking in the glory of the rise of Substack than freaking out about the decline of the gatekeepers.
Is it just that substack is grabbing a bigger mind share?
It's like getting someone to cook just for you - hyper targeted content. A newspaper is like a buffet, and these days a not very nutritious one.
Just trying to understand why is traditional media scared of substack and, apparently, not scared of other similar sevices.
Aside from that, the obvious difference is better execution. That matters.
I can't see them commanding much of an audience if forced to exist alone on Substack, away from the Times branding. Hence the hostility.
The absolute irony here has so many levels.
I read a writers words, and follow reporters as the true brands. Writers can hire editors without a publisher.
The value they could offer of being a gatekeeper and keeping out bad content is expensive and the advertising is counter to the readers desires.
It’s a broken business model.
It reminds me of the MySpace => Facebook shift. MySpace was pretty much a cesspit, and by comparison Facebook seemed clean and intellectual. But reality ignored our first impressions, and the failure modes of the model were borne out over time.
Thus I think we should be wary and critical of Substack, however superior it may first seem to that which it replaces.
[edit for clarity]
This feels like an imperative for substack -- ensure that some of their most formidable critics have a personal stake in the platform as a means to deflect criticism. Money speaks.
IT: “90% of our engagement and revenue comes from the comments section.”
VP: “If we shutdown comments, we will get 10x growth in revenue share from articles.”
CEO: “Perfect. Shut down the comments.”
> "I turned down an offer of an advance well above my Times salary, in part because of the editing and the platform The Times gives me, and in part because I didn’t think I’d make it back — media types often overvalue media writers.)'