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Comment by rvieira | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps I'm missing something, but what is fundamentally different, technically or business model-wise from, say Medium?

Is it just that substack is grabbing a bigger mind share?

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I don't know but I've paid for a couple substacks in the past few months, I've not paid for a newspaper in 20 years.

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.

Sure, I understand the appeal (and I even use substack, but just free tiers tbf).

Just trying to understand why is traditional media scared of substack and, apparently, not scared of other similar sevices.

On Medium you pay for access to all premium content with a single subscription and the writers get paid a portion of that based on their reader count. On substack you subscribe to individuals and they get your entire sub payment (minus fees).

Which probably means the writers get paid more but is more expensive for the consumer. As Medium seems to be dying out, this is probably a more viable business model. I'd expect Medium to pivot to this eventually.

Medium actually has tried at least twice to exercise traditional editorial functions, with branded publication "sections" including multiple writers -- the second such experiment just ended the same way as the first, with formerly high-profile hires losing jobs.

Aside from that, the obvious difference is better execution. That matters.

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