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Comment by andreyk | Hacker News Reader

Some more details: "Substack laid off 13 of its 90 employees on Wednesday, part of an effort to conserve cash amid an industrywide funding crunch for start-ups.

Substack’s chief executive, Chris Best, told employees that the cuts affected staff members responsible for human resources and writer support functions, among others, according to a person familiar with the discussion.

Mr. Best told employees on Wednesday that Substack had decided to cut jobs so it could fund its operations from its own revenue without raising additional financing in a difficult market, according to the person with knowledge of the discussion."

So to be fair to Substack, while their valuation is crazy it's not like they are burning through VC money with wild abandon. Nice to see some restraint instead of a CEO feeding delusional hype.

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I'm kinda surprised that a 13 employee layoff at a 90 employee company is newsworthy enough for the NYTimes.

Direct competition for labour. If writers can earn more on Substack then NYT input costs rise.

Journalists at the NYT are probably feeling some schadenfreude about it because substack is often positioned as a kind of anti-mainstream-media website.

Thank you for pointing that out. The US economy is still excepted to grow at 2.5% in 2022. So I am not understand the narrative here. While everyone who is relying on cheap funding to grow their business will be suffering, companies that have solid unit economics should thrive.

[1]https://www.oecd.org/economy/united-states-economic-snapshot...

The narrative is the elite are angry that it now actually costs something to borrow money.

The NYT editorial line despises Substack and prays for it to fail. It's certainly important news for people who are interested in Substack that they're failing to make money, though.

Why do they despise substack? Did Substack do something to piss them off ?

Substack is an existential threat to the NYTimes business model and ultimate existence.

The internal woke mob at the NYT bullied Bari Weiss out of the organization, now she’s making way more money writing over at Substack. Glenn Greenwald was also strong armed out of the media company he founded, retreated to Substack, and is prospering.

Beyond being a direct competitor to aspects of the NYT’s business, their platform and pro-free-speech ethos are an existential threat to the corporate media (like NYT) monopoly on the Overton window.

Claiming Weiss left because she was bullied out of the organization papers over leaves out the fact that there was obviously a significant pull factor to get her to jump ship, as you point out, leaving led her to make significantly more money.

But yes, there’s clearly a resentment from within elite media (WaPo/NYTimes) that people they don’t like have an avenue for editorial independence that is beyond their reach.

It may be true that there was a pull factor, but your comment appears to be trying to let the NYT staff off the hook for what would be considered abusive behavior in any other circumstance.

Reference, straight from the horse's mouth:

https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter

Quote:

> My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m “writing about the Jews again.” Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.

This is one person's statement, but it's consistent with the way many people have written about the NYT's internal culture and internal cultural shift over the last 5-10 years.

Again, I don’t doubt that there wasn’t a tense environment for her in that newsroom.

But your “from the horses mouth” citation comes from a newsletter that dedicates a significant amount of its virtual ink towards the anti woke/cancel culture run amok beat. Weiss has literally made her living on this subject for years now, she isn’t unbiased*

*that said, I do want to note that biased does not mean wrong, even though it is often portrayed that way.

"Leaves out the fact that ..." she basically deserved it (or it was otherwise necessary)?

That seems to be the innuendo you're making. Either way, I'd like to hear some substantiation as to this "significant pull factor", please.

> Either way, I'd like to hear some substantiation as to this "significant pull factor", please.

> now she’s making way more money writing over at Substack.

> she basically deserved it (or it was otherwise necessary)?

Deserved what? She quit.

Deserved what?

The bullying.

Never said she deserved to be bullied.

I'll admit to being confused by your innuendo. But your post definitely seems to be trying to minimize the abuse she suffered at the NYT -- by implying that her departure was really all about the money. And in another post you basically discounted the abuse claims entirely, saying it was merely a "tense environment".

Clearly we both take the seriousness of her claims differently, yes.

I don’t doubt that it was an unpleasant environment for her to work in, I do not read it as though it was horribly abusive as you seem to though.

So, reading her description, you would think that let's say Fox News had a similar environment for e.g. a member of protected group, it would not be "horribly abusive", and if the company refused to punish it and the victim quit, we should discount their claims of abuse and look for alternative explanations of why they quit?

Writers who develop a name can leave a lower salary for higher pay directly selling newsletters and articles. NYT makes writers famous. It creates a natural friction once a person has a "brand" and can leave for more money and less overheadaches

Is that really so though? No idea about Weiss, but journalists like Greenwald and Taibbi made the name for themselves. And even if people "become famous" while working for NYT, how much of it is really attributable to the person versus the newspaper? Major newspapers are full of people who might have name recognition but (as Greenwald often points out) never do any real journalism; and so would probably have nothing to offer as independents. Not even speaking of complete no-names.

Substack's pitch to high profile journalists and columnists is "come here, bring your fans, get supported directly, and make way more money". This is bad for the NYT and low profile journalists.

From the horse's mouth- https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/11/business/media/substack-n...

Got any proof you're willing to share?

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=nyt+editorial+substack

Please link the article in question, instead of a search results page.

My evidence is NYT editorials on substack. This search result brings up at least two for you to start with.

Surely you could have found something to quote?

I just read the first link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/11/business/media/substack-n...

Here's a quote:

> The story of Substack, the company, is interesting and, of course, meaningful to its investors. But the shift in power toward individual writers and direct payments has broader implications. And my informal survey of Substack writers found that most are fond of the company and plan to stick around for now — but not out of the sense of loyalty, shared mission or deep identification that used to run through media companies.

What did you see that tells you they 'despise' it?

It doesn't seem like you're asking in good faith. Perhaps the previous poster could have said something like 'in my opinion the NYT editorial line despises...'. A list of articles is a pretty good basis for that sort of opinion.

From what I understand, it's unlikely that a senior NYT editor would explicitly state the paper's opinion on this, which seems to be the proof that you're after, so we're left to extrapolate from their actual publication choices.

I read the articles. No basis for the comment. This is why it would have helped if the OP linked a specific article and perhaps quoted the relevant part.

What isn't in good faith is telling someone "just google it" when they're asked to provide evidence of their claims.

If that's the case then they're doing a bad job at helping it to die.

I didn't know about Substack before, but now I do! :D

Also, their users are probably going to get worse support and might have to switch platforms....

> 13 employee layoff at a 90 employee

Let's rephrase that to 14% to sound more impactful

How about:

Substack fires every 7th employee!

Septimated.

> 14% to sound more impactful

What makes you say that? I don't understand why the percentage figure would carry more weight. I look at 13/90 my brain says "roughly twenty percent", which is too much. Perhaps some people, equally innumerate as I, misjudge the other way. Either way, the facts remain the same.

Do you think numbers expressed as percentages have a different psychological effect? Maybe they sound more authoritative or clever?

It would carry more weight to someone who has never heard of Substack or doesn't know how big a company it is. They'd assume it was a large company because of who was reporting about it.

Ah yes, they're hiding the body count. Makes sense now.

I know what substack is and I fell for it.

13 people losing their jobs isn’t national news and they know it.

Clearly whoever titled the article thought it would have more impact. There's a lot of juicy ambiguity behind 14%. A percentage of what? A layman isn't going to know that it's only a 90 person company. They do know that 14% layoffs at a big company is something to get up in arms about.

Definitely psychological in my opinion.

Note that it's in the Media Business section, and Substack has been an important Media story the last few years. This seems like a normal story for someone on the Media beat to write.

They're a lot more culturally relevant than "90 employees" would suggest. And, sure, NYT is probably happy to report on their rival's misfortune.

When 20 people quit Basecamp, that got a Times article too [0] -- though also a lot of chatter on HN [1].

FWIW I agree with a different comment on this thread that Substack gets disproportionate attention in traditional media because its business model is a financial threat.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/04/30/business/stock-marke...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998127

The newsletter hype cycle is over anyway. Substack was the name on everyone's lips when they were buying off big-name writers like Andrew Sullivan. That's faded, they have yet to land any big hitters organically.

People are having to tighten budgets and cut gym memberships, newspapers, Netflix and Spotify subscriptions. Substack isn't even in the mix there.

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