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Comment by aiappreciator | Hacker News Reader

Oh, if you have good enough content that's also important to people. People will pay. I've started paying for an AI substack because the news is so important to me, and I couldn't find high quality & deep coverage in mainstream media.

Now, this does mean the 'average' journalist stands no chance. But 'average' news is already overproduced to worthlessness. No one needs the same boring take rewritten slightly. GPT-4 can already do that.

They would have been unemployed anyways, because all the average newspapers (read local newspapers) died out. The only remainders are national newspapers that only hire the best of the best.

At least now they get to experiment with their passionate topic, and potentially discover new markets, instead of being forced to report on mainstream topics.

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Oh, if you have good enough content that's also important to people. People will pay.

The question is how many will pay (not just say they'll pay) and for how long.

I used to pay for Molly White's excellent Web3 reality check newsletter. She changed the platform and I didn't follow her. It was interesting while she was reporting all of the BS and fraud, but after the bubble has popped it's less compelling.

For someone getting into a hot field like AI, will the paid subscriber interest still be there in 1 year, 2 years, 5 years? If the writer expands to an adjacent area, will that make some of his existing subs bail?

Ben Thompson keeps Stratechery going not only because he's a strong, insightful writer, but he didn't go too narrow (for instance, only Apple strategy) and there's always something to write about for people who follow this stuff. Benedict Evans works in a similar way in terms of not going too narrow.

Two factors here:

1. Journalists don't necessarily want to write about 1 topic for their entire lives either. They can pivot, and its no harder than finding a different job for a journalist.

2. Journalist writers have a responsibility and freedom to choose more durable topics. If you built your brand on a fad (web3), even if to criticize it, you make yourself vulnerable. Whereas if you built on on say cloud computing/ancient history/how to find jobs in tech, you'd be on way safer grounds. I would say AI is the rare topic that is both insanely hyped and permanently durable. The industrial revolution lasted centuries, so will AI.

So, say, "cloud computing." I've had a conversation with a successful consultant and having a "cloud computing" business for him is mostly about specializing in AWS (and costs specifically). Which is a very different business from what writing about cloud was 10 years ago. The money probably is in being a specialist but the caveat is that specialties often go out of fashion.

What Substack is this? I’m interested in a good AI Substack that keeps me up to date. I follow a few free newsletters but something more in-depth would be very helpful.

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