Substack has a secretive “Substack Pro” program where they act as a traditional publisher, paying selected authors to start columns. Unlike other publishers they don’t disclose anything about these relationships. When the program was exposed in 2021, McKenzie committed to expanding it with continued secrecy. Even if there weren’t centuries of publishing norms being ignored here, the last decade of high activity in state-funded political media makes Substack’s public commitment to secret publishing arrangements in politics especially disconcerting.