Why the Substack hype is much ado about very little(dankennedy.net)
dankennedy.net
Why the Substack hype is much ado about very little
https://dankennedy.net/2020/12/09/blogging-is-dead-long-live-blogging-or-why-the-substack-hype-is-much-ado-about-very-little/
153 comments
> The key issue is that people don't want to pay $2/month to twenty different writers. They want to pay $20/month to a single organization which has a hundred writers, also known as a "newspaper".
...actually, I'd *VASTLY* rather pay a small monthly fee to a small number of writers I care about, than a larger fee for a collection of writers that I don't.
More to the point, I am doing that, and a fair number of other people are too. If baffles me to see someone advancing the argument that "people don't want to..." and then listing something which people are very much currently choosing to do. Many people want to do exactly that! (Although I think we agree that the number of people is unlikely to be enough to be truly disruptive.)
> Maybe Substack will go the Medium way and try to aggregate
Very possibly, but if so, I expect the people enjoying their current business model will simply migrate to a competitor. $5/month for a writer I truly love is a reasonable ask. $5/month split across six writers, only one of whom I particular care for is in many ways less attractive; I may be getting more writing but the writer is getting less.
Aggregation is not obviously the only business model that makes sense here, and I think Medium - and come to that, the news industry as a whole - shows off its weaknesses very clearly.
I think the real weakness of Substack is not that "nobody wants what they're selling", but that they have very little moat. Substack doesn't need to worry that Yglesias will realise that actually he hates making more money than the entire NYT editorial board combined and quits blogging to go back to the traditional media; Substack needs to worry that he'll jump to his own platform and avoid their fairly hefty monthly cut.
...actually, I'd *VASTLY* rather pay a small monthly fee to a small number of writers I care about, than a larger fee for a collection of writers that I don't.
More to the point, I am doing that, and a fair number of other people are too. If baffles me to see someone advancing the argument that "people don't want to..." and then listing something which people are very much currently choosing to do. Many people want to do exactly that! (Although I think we agree that the number of people is unlikely to be enough to be truly disruptive.)
> Maybe Substack will go the Medium way and try to aggregate
Very possibly, but if so, I expect the people enjoying their current business model will simply migrate to a competitor. $5/month for a writer I truly love is a reasonable ask. $5/month split across six writers, only one of whom I particular care for is in many ways less attractive; I may be getting more writing but the writer is getting less.
Aggregation is not obviously the only business model that makes sense here, and I think Medium - and come to that, the news industry as a whole - shows off its weaknesses very clearly.
I think the real weakness of Substack is not that "nobody wants what they're selling", but that they have very little moat. Substack doesn't need to worry that Yglesias will realise that actually he hates making more money than the entire NYT editorial board combined and quits blogging to go back to the traditional media; Substack needs to worry that he'll jump to his own platform and avoid their fairly hefty monthly cut.
>...actually, I'd VASTLY rather pay a small monthly fee to a small number of writers I care about, than a larger fee for a collection of writers that I don't.
This is the norm, I think. Surprise surprise nobody really wants the shopping channel or the landline that comes with their broadband either.
Newspapers are well aware of the threats of unbundling. It's one of the reasons why the Economist doesn't have bylines, for instance: writers have to remain a commodity.
This is the norm, I think. Surprise surprise nobody really wants the shopping channel or the landline that comes with their broadband either.
Newspapers are well aware of the threats of unbundling. It's one of the reasons why the Economist doesn't have bylines, for instance: writers have to remain a commodity.
The Economist doesn't have bylines because that wasn't really the norm at the time when they started out. Your point--that reporting shouldn't be primarily about individual credibility--does apply though.
While, in theory, picking and choosing for opinion/analysis (as opposed to news) is valid, in practice there are limits. It basically works for me with video streaming because I'm fine with having a limited number of streaming sources. I'm not sure I would be with $1/month for newsletters much less pay-per-article.
While, in theory, picking and choosing for opinion/analysis (as opposed to news) is valid, in practice there are limits. It basically works for me with video streaming because I'm fine with having a limited number of streaming sources. I'm not sure I would be with $1/month for newsletters much less pay-per-article.
>The Economist doesn't have bylines because that wasn't really the norm at the time when they started out.
A position they held steadfast to when newspapers unionized and it became the norm. Their reliance on surprisingly young journalists (kind of like consultancy bodyshops that recruit out of uni) is one reason they were able to avoid them.
Newspapers have often been threatened by their more popular contributors leaving and taking subscribers with them.
They'd therefore never introduce bylines if they had the leverage relative to their journalists to avoid it just as McDonalds wouldnt offer free daycare if it werent struggling to hire and tech wouldnt offer free food and lavish comps.
>Your point--that reporting shouldn't be primarily about individual credibility
That doesnt seem like a point I would ever make.
I mean, you can justify it "in principle" however you like, the economics boil down to the relative leverage of management and journalists. Bylines function as an asset (reputation) that journalists can, in a sense, capitalize and gives them the leverage to take subscribers elsewhere allowing them to negotiate a greater share of the newspaper revenue (lowering profits).
A position they held steadfast to when newspapers unionized and it became the norm. Their reliance on surprisingly young journalists (kind of like consultancy bodyshops that recruit out of uni) is one reason they were able to avoid them.
Newspapers have often been threatened by their more popular contributors leaving and taking subscribers with them.
They'd therefore never introduce bylines if they had the leverage relative to their journalists to avoid it just as McDonalds wouldnt offer free daycare if it werent struggling to hire and tech wouldnt offer free food and lavish comps.
>Your point--that reporting shouldn't be primarily about individual credibility
That doesnt seem like a point I would ever make.
I mean, you can justify it "in principle" however you like, the economics boil down to the relative leverage of management and journalists. Bylines function as an asset (reputation) that journalists can, in a sense, capitalize and gives them the leverage to take subscribers elsewhere allowing them to negotiate a greater share of the newspaper revenue (lowering profits).
How many people can name a single hard news reporter (as opposed to opinion writer or editor) at the New York Times? I couldn't and I subscribe.
Interestingly they've been shrinking their byline font size throughout the years.
I can't say I've made a study of the New York Times specifically. But there was definitely a period in the mid-2000s when it was trendy to play up the individual personalities and work of journalists, analysts, etc. At some point, organizations came to realize this wasn't mostly doing the organization any favors and this sort of thing was mostly pulled back.
They always "knew" that it hit them in the profit margin but the journalistic talent had more leverage back then, newspaper margins weren't as thin and growth prospects werent as meager.
If tech has a bad decade no doubt theyll suddenly "realize" that free breakfasts arent doing them any favors and scale them back.
If tech has a bad decade no doubt theyll suddenly "realize" that free breakfasts arent doing them any favors and scale them back.
The model works for you for streaming, and the same logic will apply here.
I can easily get “the news” like you have access to TV or YouTube with similar content to streaming sites. But if you want niche subjects or specific voices, then sub stack subscriptions for the niches you care about makes sense
I can easily get “the news” like you have access to TV or YouTube with similar content to streaming sites. But if you want niche subjects or specific voices, then sub stack subscriptions for the niches you care about makes sense
Historically, there were (and to some degree are) a ton of physical magazines and sometimes newsletters catering to sometimes very niche content. I subscribed to a folding kayak newsletter at one point as well as various cooking/backpacking/etc. magazines.
But Substack content seems to be much more about "voices" as you put it and that I'm far less interested in.
But Substack content seems to be much more about "voices" as you put it and that I'm far less interested in.
Except the way this is shaking out is that paying a small fee for the unbundled channels (or writers, etc) you _do_ want ends up costing more than the bundle did. Not to mention the overhead of managing a million subscriptions to different companies.
The model only really works if there are 1 or 3 writers that you really want for whatever reason. But it doesn't really scale beyond that.
This reminds me of the market for DVDs, which found a big disconnect between the shows with big ratings on live TV and the shows that sold a ton of DVDs. The former tended to be anodyne comedies, the latter were niche shows with a harder edge.
When there's only three channels or a single local newspaper, you get content that is appealing or at least acceptable to the mass market. The smaller the market, the more extreme the content. When you get to the level of individual writers, I think there's an inevitable radicalization when people only pay for content that really really targets their idiosyncratic interests.
When there's only three channels or a single local newspaper, you get content that is appealing or at least acceptable to the mass market. The smaller the market, the more extreme the content. When you get to the level of individual writers, I think there's an inevitable radicalization when people only pay for content that really really targets their idiosyncratic interests.
> It's one of the reasons why the Economist doesn't have bylines, for instance: writers have to remain a commodity.
Do you have any evidence to support this claim? I don’t think this is true.
Do you have any evidence to support this claim? I don’t think this is true.
Substack has 250,000 paying subscribers and its top 10 writers bring in $7m total per year, according to Forbes (https://www.forbes.com/sites/falonfatemi/2021/01/20/the-rise...). We might guess that each subscriber pays $10/month, which would add up to $30m annual revenue.
The New York Times alone has 7m paying subscribers (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/business/media/new-york-t...). The cheapest subscription is 50c per week, so that's at least $182m revenue per year (in fact that's an introductory offer and the standard rate is four times that).
But Substack is growing! Yes, but so is NYT. In fact it signed up half a million new subscribers, double Substack's total, in the first quarter of 2020 alone (https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/05/the-new-york-times-success...).
Maybe the NYT is too ambitious a target. OK: the LA Times, which is "in crisis", has 356,000 digital subscribers (https://www.thewrap.com/los-angeles-times-crisis-stalled-sub...).
So, I'd say your argument is not proven yet. Wanna take a bet on when Substack total subscriptions will overtake the NYT?
The New York Times alone has 7m paying subscribers (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/business/media/new-york-t...). The cheapest subscription is 50c per week, so that's at least $182m revenue per year (in fact that's an introductory offer and the standard rate is four times that).
But Substack is growing! Yes, but so is NYT. In fact it signed up half a million new subscribers, double Substack's total, in the first quarter of 2020 alone (https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/05/the-new-york-times-success...).
Maybe the NYT is too ambitious a target. OK: the LA Times, which is "in crisis", has 356,000 digital subscribers (https://www.thewrap.com/los-angeles-times-crisis-stalled-sub...).
So, I'd say your argument is not proven yet. Wanna take a bet on when Substack total subscriptions will overtake the NYT?
6 writers you care about okay but where can investigative pieces that take months or years to create fit into that?
We’d need 10x that number, pay like 60 writers if we want to read articles that have actual research on a weekly basis, not a daily basis.
We’d need 10x that number, pay like 60 writers if we want to read articles that have actual research on a weekly basis, not a daily basis.
> where can investigative pieces that take months or years to create fit into that?
They don't. The problem is, they don't fit in ANYWHERE. Nobody wants to pay for that, and in fact, nobody ever has. As has been documented ad infinitum at this point, serious, long form, investigative journalism has always been cross-subsidised from other revenue streams, because at no point has their been an audience willing to pay the actual cost of investigative journalism.
Traditionally the funds came from advertising, particularly classified ads, but classified ad revenue died...what, over two decades ago now? Print advertisement revenue followed, the weird shift so many newspapers tried into video was an embarrassing disaster, and here we are, 20+ years of flailing later and no replacements visible.
Will Substack solve this? Absolutely not. Hell, by continuing the great unbundling it might make it worse by undermining the revenue stream for the 2-3 newspapers still trying to make a go of it.
Which is, ultimately, my point: Your argument seems to be "unbundling will fail, because it won't pay for the high quality journalism people want". My argument is "unbundling will succeed, because people don't want to pay for high quality journalism".
They don't. The problem is, they don't fit in ANYWHERE. Nobody wants to pay for that, and in fact, nobody ever has. As has been documented ad infinitum at this point, serious, long form, investigative journalism has always been cross-subsidised from other revenue streams, because at no point has their been an audience willing to pay the actual cost of investigative journalism.
Traditionally the funds came from advertising, particularly classified ads, but classified ad revenue died...what, over two decades ago now? Print advertisement revenue followed, the weird shift so many newspapers tried into video was an embarrassing disaster, and here we are, 20+ years of flailing later and no replacements visible.
Will Substack solve this? Absolutely not. Hell, by continuing the great unbundling it might make it worse by undermining the revenue stream for the 2-3 newspapers still trying to make a go of it.
Which is, ultimately, my point: Your argument seems to be "unbundling will fail, because it won't pay for the high quality journalism people want". My argument is "unbundling will succeed, because people don't want to pay for high quality journalism".
No my argument isn’t that substack will fail, my point is that if it succeeds it will be deleterious to society by further defunding real journalism, which is barely funded. Like you say, very few newspapers are doing real, long term investigate reporting. Usually they win pulitzers when they actually do.
And substack is just another platform for people with grudges and conspiracy theories to promote themselves on.
And substack is just another platform for people with grudges and conspiracy theories to promote themselves on.
You're assuming that people care about the output of 20 writers though. Probably they don't.
You need dozens or hundreds of substitutable writers under a single roof if you're reporting factual updates about a concrete situation as quickly as possible. Natural disasters, elections, sports, law changes, etc. Substack is for analysis and commentary. Traditional newspapers also bundle a handful of "superstar" writers along with their news, but many of those writers aren't very good and especially in the past 8 years many of the better ones have been purged because the best analysis requires free thinking, but free thinking is incompatible with a hard left takeover of an institution. It's no coincidence that Substack's top earning writers like Greenwald, Taibbi, Scott Alexander have all been purged from other media outlets for their un-woke writing: there is demand for such analysis but newspapers are trying to extinguish it. In Taibbi's case he was pushed out of the media outlet he himself founded! Substack is now monetizing this demand, apparently, very successfully (the deals they cut with those writers have supposedly all been very profitable for Substack).
You need dozens or hundreds of substitutable writers under a single roof if you're reporting factual updates about a concrete situation as quickly as possible. Natural disasters, elections, sports, law changes, etc. Substack is for analysis and commentary. Traditional newspapers also bundle a handful of "superstar" writers along with their news, but many of those writers aren't very good and especially in the past 8 years many of the better ones have been purged because the best analysis requires free thinking, but free thinking is incompatible with a hard left takeover of an institution. It's no coincidence that Substack's top earning writers like Greenwald, Taibbi, Scott Alexander have all been purged from other media outlets for their un-woke writing: there is demand for such analysis but newspapers are trying to extinguish it. In Taibbi's case he was pushed out of the media outlet he himself founded! Substack is now monetizing this demand, apparently, very successfully (the deals they cut with those writers have supposedly all been very profitable for Substack).
I get it why readers can't pay individual writers in the newspaper world. That's because it only makes sense to print and deliver one kind of identical newspaper and deliver that to everyone. The printing is done with plates. You make one plate per page (well a few pages at a time) and you use that plate to print thousands of copies of the page. The page contains an assortment of articles. The newspaper is physically delivered to homes and news stands.
Now we're in the internet. There are no such constraints. Why not just pay directly per article?
Spotify for example collects money but distributes it to artists, per-listen. Spotify has basically almost all the music in the world. And other services have it too. Anybody can upload to Spotify or Apple Music or Tidal or what you have. So Spotify is not really doing curating or having a quality standards or an editor anything, like a newspaper, it's just a way to collect and distribute money.
There is the still-unloved problem of curation. You could use humans for good curation but discoverability is quite bad.
(Edit: yes in the newspaper world there is the syndication, Reuters, AFP etc, too, and staff writers etc, it's a bit more complicated.)
Now we're in the internet. There are no such constraints. Why not just pay directly per article?
Spotify for example collects money but distributes it to artists, per-listen. Spotify has basically almost all the music in the world. And other services have it too. Anybody can upload to Spotify or Apple Music or Tidal or what you have. So Spotify is not really doing curating or having a quality standards or an editor anything, like a newspaper, it's just a way to collect and distribute money.
There is the still-unloved problem of curation. You could use humans for good curation but discoverability is quite bad.
(Edit: yes in the newspaper world there is the syndication, Reuters, AFP etc, too, and staff writers etc, it's a bit more complicated.)
I think it mostly comes down to having way too much cognitive overhead. All the options I've seen presented just require far too many value decisions too frequently. Once nice bundle I can be quite sure of is just requires so much less thinking. It's even better because I can frame it in my head as exchanging money for a physical thing, and then I can do whatever I want with that physical thing - including ignore it.
Micropayments really suffer from this constantly. So much so that I think the value of the content goes negative once you factor in the costs to decide if you want to pay for it and then the costs of paying for it (mostly not monetary costs). Individual subscriptions (aka Patreon) bulk them all together at once and will just keep happening so you better keep on top of them.
The main alternative that doesn't quite suffer from this is the model of a single payment that gets smeared automatically across everything. I chuck in $X/month and it gets automatically distributed to all the sites I've visted somehow. I think this suffers from different problems. Namely that I probably don't want to pay in proportion to time spent or pages viewed but value. My money would probably end up largely going to the big companies and not so much to the little guys, while I'd probably personally choose the opposite proportions. And other times there are websites you've visited that you definitely don't want to give money to, because they managed to SEO their utterly useless page into your search results, or whatever. So now you have to go deal with that, or else pay them for troubling you.
And then before long you've gotten so deep into engineering how this payment gets distributed that you're practically at the level of micropayments anyway.
And then you start considering things like privacy, or issues with payment processors caring about content and... it all just gets far too messy.
Micropayments really suffer from this constantly. So much so that I think the value of the content goes negative once you factor in the costs to decide if you want to pay for it and then the costs of paying for it (mostly not monetary costs). Individual subscriptions (aka Patreon) bulk them all together at once and will just keep happening so you better keep on top of them.
The main alternative that doesn't quite suffer from this is the model of a single payment that gets smeared automatically across everything. I chuck in $X/month and it gets automatically distributed to all the sites I've visted somehow. I think this suffers from different problems. Namely that I probably don't want to pay in proportion to time spent or pages viewed but value. My money would probably end up largely going to the big companies and not so much to the little guys, while I'd probably personally choose the opposite proportions. And other times there are websites you've visited that you definitely don't want to give money to, because they managed to SEO their utterly useless page into your search results, or whatever. So now you have to go deal with that, or else pay them for troubling you.
And then before long you've gotten so deep into engineering how this payment gets distributed that you're practically at the level of micropayments anyway.
And then you start considering things like privacy, or issues with payment processors caring about content and... it all just gets far too messy.
You probably would need to get to some sort of aggregator with either a fixed or max monthly fee. The problem at that point is that no one who can attract a significant number of subscribers on their own will participate. Imagine a newspaper/magazine subscription that the NYT, WSJ, Post, New Yorker, Bloomberg, Atlantic, etc. don't participate in.
And then you have the streaming video issue. Aggregator A has this writer but not that writer, etc.
And then you have the streaming video issue. Aggregator A has this writer but not that writer, etc.
The writer could just say that in addition to this article being published in NYT, I will retain the right to publish it on aggregator A and B. I don't expect the newspapers to participate.
What's different about news and music is that there's not so much interest in the back catalog in news. So publishers could have less power than record companies.
Regarding streaming, again, that's only a problem if there is exclusivity.
What's different about news and music is that there's not so much interest in the back catalog in news. So publishers could have less power than record companies.
Regarding streaming, again, that's only a problem if there is exclusivity.
>The writer could just say that in addition to this article being published in NYT, I will retain the right to publish it on aggregator A and B. I don't expect the newspapers to participate.
You do have that with syndicated columns, cartoons, wire service copy, etc. Although the NYT uses less of that sort of content than many papers do.
You do have that with syndicated columns, cartoons, wire service copy, etc. Although the NYT uses less of that sort of content than many papers do.
Yes, but not from a consumer point of view. If I want to read those AFP and Reuters stories, I still have to go to a select small paywalled garden, ie I can't get all of them with one monthly payment.
It's a different topology from Spotify and Apple Music.
It's a different topology from Spotify and Apple Music.
At least you could have reputable aggregators or "raters" for these kind of articles.
Absolutely! You could have a single aggregator which selects different articles and publishes them. It would stake its reputation on the quality of its journalism. Writers would compete to get into the best aggregator. This is a great idea. Needs a name. How about "newspaper"?
Pandora.com, which launched in 2000, predating Spotify by 6 years, did a really good with discoverability. That was actually their primary feature - customizable radio stations, that you'd seed with a specific suggestion, and then further curate with a thumbs up/thumbs down. If you put in some time and effort, the stations would get really good at knowing what you liked, and would introduce new music. Spotify's radio feature is a poor shadow of this feature. (Soundcloud's is even worse.)
Because it's music, and not written text, and thus on in the background, having an 80/20 (or whatever) split for old/new music was really great for discovering new music that's similar.
TikTok solved discoverability for brief video clips, but they demand full attention. Basically the opposite of music.
Discoverability for the written word is a bit more complex, especially for long form articles.
(Pandora's backend implementation irrelevant here. Pandora predates the popularity of ML, so I presume there was a lot of human effort going on behind the scenes to make it work so well.)
Because it's music, and not written text, and thus on in the background, having an 80/20 (or whatever) split for old/new music was really great for discovering new music that's similar.
TikTok solved discoverability for brief video clips, but they demand full attention. Basically the opposite of music.
Discoverability for the written word is a bit more complex, especially for long form articles.
(Pandora's backend implementation irrelevant here. Pandora predates the popularity of ML, so I presume there was a lot of human effort going on behind the scenes to make it work so well.)
pandora used the music genome project to get so good:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Genome_Project
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Genome_Project
I'm sure a columnist would find a way to make this work, but the typical journalist adapting a report from AP or Reuters won't.
No, that's the problem.
If I want to listen to Lady Gaga, I can do that from any of the music services. The artist gets a cut from my monthly payment to whichever service I use.
If I want to read an article about traveling to Iceland during Covid times and it's in Washington Post while I subscribe to the New York Times, I can't, unless I subscribe to the Washington Post.
Maybe a writer writing to NYT does get money according to the amount of clicks to their article. Some articles can even be free and the money comes from ad revenue. But it's still a small walled garden. People just don't get to see many well written articles because they are locked behind this small garden paywall and most people don't want to pay the entrance fee.
How about a "Writer Money Distribution service". People could subscribe to it. You could build a curated edited newspaper out of such articles, if you wanted. But a user could also read any article, and they would know that their monthly money would be distributed to the writers according to the what they did read. There could be even multiple services and the same writer could publish to multiple with no exclusivity clause.
Edit: Hell, Hacker News is one excellent article curation service that has supplanted the place of a newspaper. But there's no revenue feedback mechanism. What does the writer benefit from being linked to from HN? Many people use some go-around-the-paywall service since they don't want to subscribe, which indeed would be irrational for only a few articles every now and then.
If I want to listen to Lady Gaga, I can do that from any of the music services. The artist gets a cut from my monthly payment to whichever service I use.
If I want to read an article about traveling to Iceland during Covid times and it's in Washington Post while I subscribe to the New York Times, I can't, unless I subscribe to the Washington Post.
Maybe a writer writing to NYT does get money according to the amount of clicks to their article. Some articles can even be free and the money comes from ad revenue. But it's still a small walled garden. People just don't get to see many well written articles because they are locked behind this small garden paywall and most people don't want to pay the entrance fee.
How about a "Writer Money Distribution service". People could subscribe to it. You could build a curated edited newspaper out of such articles, if you wanted. But a user could also read any article, and they would know that their monthly money would be distributed to the writers according to the what they did read. There could be even multiple services and the same writer could publish to multiple with no exclusivity clause.
Edit: Hell, Hacker News is one excellent article curation service that has supplanted the place of a newspaper. But there's no revenue feedback mechanism. What does the writer benefit from being linked to from HN? Many people use some go-around-the-paywall service since they don't want to subscribe, which indeed would be irrational for only a few articles every now and then.
The problem in your analogy is you don’t think Lady Gaga is worth paying close attention to. Substack’s proposition is that an individual writer has an audience willing to pay to read much or all of what the writer publishes. It’s not a business model seeking dabblers on either side of the transaction.
Good way of putting it. Substack, as currently positioned, is for people who are sufficiently motivated to pay the equivalent of a traditional magazine subscription for maybe a few writers who produce engaging content, presumably on a frequent basis, that they find worth paying for relative to free alternatives.
I assume Substack payouts are very power law.
I assume Substack payouts are very power law.
I would like a "Build your own magazine" type deal. Let me configure a list of the writers I want to read and give me a sizable discount on the subscription or a bundled deal. I don't want to pay 10 dollars a month to each of 20 writers, but I would pay 20 dollars a month to read and support 20 writers.
The problem with this type of thing (channel unbundling has the same problem), is the finance doesn't work out.
After someone has written something / produced a TV channel, sending it to one more person costs basically nothing.
So, if (making up some simple numbers) there are 100 writers who want paying $10 each, and 100 customers who want to pay $10 each, you can:
* Charge each customer $10 and let them read every writer (most of which they won't want)
* Charge each customer $1 a writer, then they get to read 10 writers.
* Charge each customer $10 a writer, then they get to read 1 writer.
People often say they want to pay a smaller amount for a subset of content, not realising that if everyone does that, you just end up spending the same amount as you started, on a subset of content.
After someone has written something / produced a TV channel, sending it to one more person costs basically nothing.
So, if (making up some simple numbers) there are 100 writers who want paying $10 each, and 100 customers who want to pay $10 each, you can:
* Charge each customer $10 and let them read every writer (most of which they won't want)
* Charge each customer $1 a writer, then they get to read 10 writers.
* Charge each customer $10 a writer, then they get to read 1 writer.
People often say they want to pay a smaller amount for a subset of content, not realising that if everyone does that, you just end up spending the same amount as you started, on a subset of content.
This is what excites me about the proposed W3 Web Monetization standard. I don't want to establish a billing relationship with every creator whose content I value.
Have a wallet that's loaded with value, send out payments for every second you spend with a creator's work.
https://coil.com and https://WebMonetization.org
Have a wallet that's loaded with value, send out payments for every second you spend with a creator's work.
https://coil.com and https://WebMonetization.org
> for every second you spend with a creator's work
Time spend is a really bad metric since it can easily be gamed. For non-entertainment content time spent could oven correlate negatively with value.
Time spend is a really bad metric since it can easily be gamed. For non-entertainment content time spent could oven correlate negatively with value.
Totally agree with this. We'll just end up with more waffling long form content packed with videos and distractions to encourage users to spend more time trying to find what they were originally looking for.
And if you're charged by time spent on a page it makes sense to use a bot to download the pages you want to read and then render them locally.
If I'm paying per second I can download something that would take me 5 minutes to read in 5 seconds, saving me 59/60ths of the cost.
If I'm paying per second I can download something that would take me 5 minutes to read in 5 seconds, saving me 59/60ths of the cost.
The idea is quite old, Flattr has been doing something similar for 11 years now. The UI is a bit less polished though. https://flattr.com/
Thank you! I'm in the same boat and think that it's a great potential way forward, with very little friction - it can work on any random blog without me having to trust them with my payment details. I hope more people pick up on it ( and tried to help with an article that somehow got to #1 on HN, but the comments were mostly negative)
That's if you assume a static set of readers and writers and fixed prices.
If every reader gets to choose which writers get their money, the least popular writers will get nothing and the most popular ones will get much more than they expected.
Then the writers who got nothing will presumably give up, thus increasing the average attractiveness of content on the platform. Meanwhile, the most popular writers can adjust their expected compensation upward but still lower the price per reader, thus increasing their readership even more.
On the other hand, if you're paying a flat fee to read anything you want, you'll be subsidizing a whole lot of crap you don't want, without a feedback channel to correct that.
If every reader gets to choose which writers get their money, the least popular writers will get nothing and the most popular ones will get much more than they expected.
Then the writers who got nothing will presumably give up, thus increasing the average attractiveness of content on the platform. Meanwhile, the most popular writers can adjust their expected compensation upward but still lower the price per reader, thus increasing their readership even more.
On the other hand, if you're paying a flat fee to read anything you want, you'll be subsidizing a whole lot of crap you don't want, without a feedback channel to correct that.
The problem is with fixing the prices on the sellers end. You’re leaving money on the table by not allowing for price negotiation. A set price essentially tells everyone below that price point that your store is closed so don’t even bother. It also gives away your content at a discount to those who would gladly pay more.
Which is the case for 99% of things that are sold whether physically or digitally. Because, in general, at least in the West, most people don't want their days to be endless successions of bargaining where only the best and most persistent negotiators get good deals.
I certainly don't want to negotiate every time I want to read an article. Heck, I don't want to decide to pay a fixed amount every time I want to read an article.
I certainly don't want to negotiate every time I want to read an article. Heck, I don't want to decide to pay a fixed amount every time I want to read an article.
I wasn’t touting haggling, I meant a name your price model.
We basically have channel unbundling now though don’t we? Netflix, Hulu, Prime, Disney+, HBOMax, etc. It works for the most part. And it’s cheaper than what Comcast charges for cable.
I wonder how much of that is currently being heavily subsidized, and prices will rise. One significant difference is access to old content -- we might just not need anywhere near as much new content, which will makes things cheaper in the future.
It probably is cheaper if you ditch live TV (like I did)--or can get it over the air. If you add a $60-ish live TV subscription, without sport adders, it isn't especially.
The writers you're most likely to want to read – the top-earning writers – have already demonstrated (through Substack) that they can easily acquire an audience of tens of thousands of subscribers by charging $5-10 dollars per month for themselves. Why would they participate in the bundle you're suggesting?
Advertising? Have some articles be part of the bundle as a "preview", and most articles behind an individual subscription?
This idea of building your own newspaper sounds kind of interesting actually: a mix of authors you've picked and an automatically curated content from other authors to help you find new authors.
This idea of building your own newspaper sounds kind of interesting actually: a mix of authors you've picked and an automatically curated content from other authors to help you find new authors.
> The logic is simple: an individual writer is always relatively niche. Niche means small audience. Small audience means you have to charge more per person to cover your costs.
I guess the question is does that model work? Rather than catering to a generalist audience focus on a niche and charge more to people who can't get that content anywhere else.
Free content then plays to the more generalist audience and helps attract people who are more seriously interested in your niche.
I started doing this with my substack, which is aimed at the relatively narrow niche of sequencing technologies (biotech). The information I provide, isn't really available elsewhere and requires an industry background, and significant research. This information can play into investment decisions, so I've priced it to reflect that (~$50/m).
I don't have enough paid subscribers to justify the effort yet. But every paid subscriber provides some meaningful amount of money...
I could see this working in other areas too. I'm not sure the niche even needs to be super small. For example, English language reporting on Japan is generally pretty bad. Could you find at least 200 people worldwide willing to pay $50/m for detailed well sourced reporting on Japan? It seems likely to me...
It doesn't even matter if those 200 people republish your work in some form. They're paying privilege of getting that information first.
I guess the question is does that model work? Rather than catering to a generalist audience focus on a niche and charge more to people who can't get that content anywhere else.
Free content then plays to the more generalist audience and helps attract people who are more seriously interested in your niche.
I started doing this with my substack, which is aimed at the relatively narrow niche of sequencing technologies (biotech). The information I provide, isn't really available elsewhere and requires an industry background, and significant research. This information can play into investment decisions, so I've priced it to reflect that (~$50/m).
I don't have enough paid subscribers to justify the effort yet. But every paid subscriber provides some meaningful amount of money...
I could see this working in other areas too. I'm not sure the niche even needs to be super small. For example, English language reporting on Japan is generally pretty bad. Could you find at least 200 people worldwide willing to pay $50/m for detailed well sourced reporting on Japan? It seems likely to me...
It doesn't even matter if those 200 people republish your work in some form. They're paying privilege of getting that information first.
Just to play devil’s advocate: anytime a new idea comes along there will always be someone advocating for the status quo, and that the status quo is inevitable.
I am reminded of the financial commentator on the radio in the early 2000’s predicting that Amazon would fail because it had stopped offering free shipping.
Time will tell. I don’t have a crystal ball, but I’m rooting for substack.
I am reminded of the financial commentator on the radio in the early 2000’s predicting that Amazon would fail because it had stopped offering free shipping.
Time will tell. I don’t have a crystal ball, but I’m rooting for substack.
In fairness free shipping with Prime is a cornerstone of Amazon's business model these days.
Rather importantly it's not free shipping, you're merely paying a discounted rate for shipping. You get cheaper shipping, Amazon gets increased customer retention by getting you to make an upfront financial outlay for future shipping use (which the customer then feels compelled to try to get the most out of).
If Amazon made Prime free for everyone and kept their retail prices unchanged, there'd be a good argument for saying it's free shipping.
If Amazon made Prime free for everyone and kept their retail prices unchanged, there'd be a good argument for saying it's free shipping.
"The key issue is that people don't want to pay $2/month to twenty different writers. They want to pay $20/month to a single organization which has a hundred writers, also known as a "newspaper"."
That is not my experience at all. Buying a newspaper where you are only interested in 15 % of the content is like buying an entire CD with perhaps two really good songs. This model used to be the norm, but consumers hated it and it is becoming obsolete.
That is not my experience at all. Buying a newspaper where you are only interested in 15 % of the content is like buying an entire CD with perhaps two really good songs. This model used to be the norm, but consumers hated it and it is becoming obsolete.
The winning model is all-you-can-eat subscriptions. Netflix, Spotify, Amazon Video, Disney+ don't offer subscriptions by singer, by actor, by screenwriter, or by director.
> They want to pay $20/month to a single organization which has a hundred writers, also known as a "newspaper".
I think the demise of the publishing industry proves this point comically incorrect!
I think the demise of the publishing industry proves this point comically incorrect!
Basically most people don't want to pay period. Very few are paying $2/month for individuals either.
ADDED: Of course, very few is not no one. "Very few" people in the scheme of things buy a lot of books either but some authors make a lot of money. But if you're betting on how much money a book will bring in, don't give up your day job. And, with respect to journalism, the bar is even higher if you're talking investigative journalism that may not produce results for many months if ever.
ADDED: Of course, very few is not no one. "Very few" people in the scheme of things buy a lot of books either but some authors make a lot of money. But if you're betting on how much money a book will bring in, don't give up your day job. And, with respect to journalism, the bar is even higher if you're talking investigative journalism that may not produce results for many months if ever.
I'd say only because there haven't been any good options yet.
I happily paid for Blendle as long as they had my best interest in mind (refundable) and only didn't pay more because there wasn't more relevant articles for me.
I'll happily pay for substack etc as well if there is something really interesting, but it either needs to be very interesting, small amounts or someone needs to come along with a real all-you-can-read-model like Spotify.
Ideally I want the option to pay pr piece, or pay a bit more for all todays posts from a channel (newspaper).
I happily paid for Blendle as long as they had my best interest in mind (refundable) and only didn't pay more because there wasn't more relevant articles for me.
I'll happily pay for substack etc as well if there is something really interesting, but it either needs to be very interesting, small amounts or someone needs to come along with a real all-you-can-read-model like Spotify.
Ideally I want the option to pay pr piece, or pay a bit more for all todays posts from a channel (newspaper).
Free is preferable, but if required to pay, I want to pay as little as possible and only for what I want.
A very similar argument could have been applied to travel agents a generation+ ago. There was a single bill to pay instead of booking your own hotel, flights, cruise, rental car, etc, etc.
It turns out that many (not all) people are willing, able, and actively want to make the choices to curate their experience and see what happens. Yes, it's more work but it's probably closer to what they want.. OR if they miss, it's on them with few others to blame.
We've reached the point where there is SO much noise and the algorithms are optimized to feed you more noise that people suffer. In some cases, it manifests as the constant anxiety and stress of "omg this thing happened!" while in others, it's just the constant interruptions.
Regardless, I suspect we're going to see the pendulum swing back and we'll see strategic disconnection to filter out the noise, chaos, and BS. If that's correct, Substack nailed the timing and should do well for quite a while to come.
It turns out that many (not all) people are willing, able, and actively want to make the choices to curate their experience and see what happens. Yes, it's more work but it's probably closer to what they want.. OR if they miss, it's on them with few others to blame.
We've reached the point where there is SO much noise and the algorithms are optimized to feed you more noise that people suffer. In some cases, it manifests as the constant anxiety and stress of "omg this thing happened!" while in others, it's just the constant interruptions.
Regardless, I suspect we're going to see the pendulum swing back and we'll see strategic disconnection to filter out the noise, chaos, and BS. If that's correct, Substack nailed the timing and should do well for quite a while to come.
> The problem is that the NYT, Guardian, Mail etc. have a lot of experience at doing aggregation well.
Depending on what you mean by "well". I haven't "read" the newspaper in any traditional sense - i.e. reading it as a whole product, not picking a single article - in decades. I haven't subscribed to a traditional newspaper (I exclude special interest magazines) for even longer. I know for a fact that the work of real journalists (investigative, etc.) is being routinely suppressed or restricted by their major newspaper employees because of reasons having nothing to do with reporting. I am getting much more high-quality content from independent journalists (including Substack ones, but not only) and writers than I could ever have found in any newspaper. I struggle to find anything that traditional newspapers like NYT do "well" for me. They have a variety of topics? Who cares. If I'm interested in what a certain author has to say or in a certain topic - which rarely happens with NYT nowdays, but nevertheless - I don't care who pays the salary to the writer. I know that there's no chance a single subscription - or even several of them - would cover even part of my interests, I'd be needing my hundreds-strong RSS feed anyway. So what's the point? What exactly is being done well there?
Depending on what you mean by "well". I haven't "read" the newspaper in any traditional sense - i.e. reading it as a whole product, not picking a single article - in decades. I haven't subscribed to a traditional newspaper (I exclude special interest magazines) for even longer. I know for a fact that the work of real journalists (investigative, etc.) is being routinely suppressed or restricted by their major newspaper employees because of reasons having nothing to do with reporting. I am getting much more high-quality content from independent journalists (including Substack ones, but not only) and writers than I could ever have found in any newspaper. I struggle to find anything that traditional newspapers like NYT do "well" for me. They have a variety of topics? Who cares. If I'm interested in what a certain author has to say or in a certain topic - which rarely happens with NYT nowdays, but nevertheless - I don't care who pays the salary to the writer. I know that there's no chance a single subscription - or even several of them - would cover even part of my interests, I'd be needing my hundreds-strong RSS feed anyway. So what's the point? What exactly is being done well there?
“ The logic is simple: an individual writer is always relatively niche. Niche means small audience. Small audience means you have to charge more per person to cover your costs.”
Except, with the Internet you don’t have physical/geographical constraints for distribution and suddenly a niche audience, at a global level, is not so niche. And it makes it a viable model, a thousand people paying $5/mo and all of a sudden you are making more than most journalists AND with much greater freedom of expression
Except, with the Internet you don’t have physical/geographical constraints for distribution and suddenly a niche audience, at a global level, is not so niche. And it makes it a viable model, a thousand people paying $5/mo and all of a sudden you are making more than most journalists AND with much greater freedom of expression
> The key issue is that people don't want to pay $2/month to twenty different writers. They want to pay $20/month to a single organization which has a hundred writers, also known as a "newspaper".
My experience is the opposite. I get the Boston Globe delivered every Sunday. It's fine. I flip through it. Occasionally there's a story I care a lot about. Some weeks there's nothing. I read it mostly because I feel loosely obligated to try to keep up with current events.
On the other hand, I subscribe to Matthew Yglesias's Substack and the hit rate is like 85%. Nearly every article perfectly aligns with one or more of my interests. His policy focus almost exactly overlaps my policy interests. It's kind of uncanny.
If I had to cancel one or the other it's really not even close.
My experience is the opposite. I get the Boston Globe delivered every Sunday. It's fine. I flip through it. Occasionally there's a story I care a lot about. Some weeks there's nothing. I read it mostly because I feel loosely obligated to try to keep up with current events.
On the other hand, I subscribe to Matthew Yglesias's Substack and the hit rate is like 85%. Nearly every article perfectly aligns with one or more of my interests. His policy focus almost exactly overlaps my policy interests. It's kind of uncanny.
If I had to cancel one or the other it's really not even close.
Also, the psychology of most people's internet browsing is that of a casual, enjoyable activity undertaken to escape from whatever else they're doing, with only a few moments spent reading a typical article.
Insert a purchase decision into that flowful sesh (even for as little as a penny) and most will find it more relaxing to just instead go and click on one of the many free articles at their disposal being served up by free aggregators (like this one).
These debates always pop up here with little awareness that the newspaper industry tried micropayments 20 years ago and it didn't work. Paywalls were discovered in 2011 or so, they worked, and that's pretty much been that.
Source: I founded a micropayments company in 2002 and worked at a newspaper 2009-2013.
Insert a purchase decision into that flowful sesh (even for as little as a penny) and most will find it more relaxing to just instead go and click on one of the many free articles at their disposal being served up by free aggregators (like this one).
These debates always pop up here with little awareness that the newspaper industry tried micropayments 20 years ago and it didn't work. Paywalls were discovered in 2011 or so, they worked, and that's pretty much been that.
Source: I founded a micropayments company in 2002 and worked at a newspaper 2009-2013.
The problem with aggregation is that there is a regression to clickbait. If I charge 20 dollars per month to access the work of 1k writers and pay the writers based on views/production. Then I will pay the most prolific/clickable writers at the expense of quality.
Paying more for a smaller collection of writers may provide me more value.
Paying more for a smaller collection of writers may provide me more value.
A bundle deal would be cool. But I'd prefer to pay the $20/month to read x articles regardless of who writes them.
Or even better $10 for n tokens, $20 for n * 2,5 tokens, $30 for n*3 tokens or something to that effect.
Charge me monthly to to up but not if I have more than m unspent tokens.
Charge me monthly to to up but not if I have more than m unspent tokens.
Agree. That way you can discover new writers that you will come to like.
I pay for some subscriptions on Substack. I get access to writing I will not find elsewhere. I think the article is missing one important point. Specifically, all journalists read and reprint each other. Strong independent authors on Substack influence rest of media. Kind of surprising that the author(an insider) fails to see this
I’m not so sure. Substack is clearly not blogging as I can’t remember the last time I paid for a blog.
And the financial returns are real. I vaguely recall someone, Glenn maybe, who shared they had 6,000 subscribers at $60 per year or $360,000 in income. Clearly more than enough to sustain a writer.
And the financial returns are real. I vaguely recall someone, Glenn maybe, who shared they had 6,000 subscribers at $60 per year or $360,000 in income. Clearly more than enough to sustain a writer.
What I don't get in these conversations is why no one mentions the role of the editorial team?
Expecting even a great journalist to write consistently interesting and clear pieces on their own is like letting a musician record without a producer. It might be good for a while but the chances are a great producer is going to even out the output and make a tremendous difference in depth, quality and accessibility. To say nothing of checking the wilder excesses.
These discussions which focus on the stars ignore the team so necessary for consistent and readable articles. I suppose the lone genius idea has an inexorable fascination.
Expecting even a great journalist to write consistently interesting and clear pieces on their own is like letting a musician record without a producer. It might be good for a while but the chances are a great producer is going to even out the output and make a tremendous difference in depth, quality and accessibility. To say nothing of checking the wilder excesses.
These discussions which focus on the stars ignore the team so necessary for consistent and readable articles. I suppose the lone genius idea has an inexorable fascination.
Most people don't understand what editors do. Or what they used to do. These days editors in major publications seem to be preoccupied mostly with ideology enforcement. But when editors do their job properly, they are part quality control, part coordinators, part peer review. The notion that all of that is just a waste of time is quite misguided, since it's the lack of those exact things that caused modern corporate media to go to shit. But in the short tem fleeing traditional publications to something like Substack does make sense right now, precisely because editors of traditional publications became parasitic.
> These days editors in major publications seem to be preoccupied mostly with ideology enforcement.
> ... precisely because editors of traditional publications became parasitic
Could you provide some evidence about what you mean? In these two sentences, you seem to be implying that there's some observable trend where editors have gone from:
1a. Not enforcing the political stance of their paper and 2a. Being indispensable to the writing process
to:
1b. Enforcing the political stance of their paper and 2b. Becoming adversarial to the writing process
This is very interesting. Could you provide some examples?
> ... precisely because editors of traditional publications became parasitic
Could you provide some evidence about what you mean? In these two sentences, you seem to be implying that there's some observable trend where editors have gone from:
1a. Not enforcing the political stance of their paper and 2a. Being indispensable to the writing process
to:
1b. Enforcing the political stance of their paper and 2b. Becoming adversarial to the writing process
This is very interesting. Could you provide some examples?
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-the-int...
https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter
And not directly related, but relevant overall:
https://odysee.com/@AlisonMorrow:6/death-of-journalism-by-mo...
https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter
And not directly related, but relevant overall:
https://odysee.com/@AlisonMorrow:6/death-of-journalism-by-mo...
Thank you for taking the time to provide links! I read through the Weiss article, and I'd already read the Greenwald one. However I don't believe either can credibly used to point to any kind of historical trend.
The Weiss article isn't even about any local editorial change: the paper found someone to provide a contrarian voice; that contrarian met frequent disagreement with the editors; that contrarian resigned--regression to the mean.
The case of the Greenwald and Reality Winner is much worse. But at the end, it's just a case of an editorial board taking control of story, nothing historically unprecedented.
I've been politically conscious since 1996 or so, and I don't think I can ever recall a single time where editorial boards didn't work to push through the position of their publication. I think I became acutely aware of "position" in 2003, with "Operation Iraqi Freedom" and Fox news, etc. But using the media to hype up war on false pretenses is a venerable tradition in the history of journalism, which, at least in the US, is a business and a political enterprise.
Everything I've described in the last paragraph is socially harmful, and I think it's very important to have underground media and alt media as a counterweight to the mainstream. But there is also a strong need for professional, organized journalism, and I'm sure it still exists in at least some pages the New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, the Economist, etc, and even local Tribunes throughout the country.
I don't think the proportion of quality fact checkers and editors has somehow degraded in the last x* years. The only things that I think have changed are the _widely-held perception_ that journalism is somehow terrible now, and the explosion of news being distributed in social media. The first is just standard tongue-clucking about the decline of democratic society; the second is about information being distributed at a totally new velocity and availability. I have no idea how the future will deal with that, the effect is only just beginning.
* I'm not sure over what time period your proposed decline is supposed to have taken place.
The Weiss article isn't even about any local editorial change: the paper found someone to provide a contrarian voice; that contrarian met frequent disagreement with the editors; that contrarian resigned--regression to the mean.
The case of the Greenwald and Reality Winner is much worse. But at the end, it's just a case of an editorial board taking control of story, nothing historically unprecedented.
I've been politically conscious since 1996 or so, and I don't think I can ever recall a single time where editorial boards didn't work to push through the position of their publication. I think I became acutely aware of "position" in 2003, with "Operation Iraqi Freedom" and Fox news, etc. But using the media to hype up war on false pretenses is a venerable tradition in the history of journalism, which, at least in the US, is a business and a political enterprise.
Everything I've described in the last paragraph is socially harmful, and I think it's very important to have underground media and alt media as a counterweight to the mainstream. But there is also a strong need for professional, organized journalism, and I'm sure it still exists in at least some pages the New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, the Economist, etc, and even local Tribunes throughout the country.
I don't think the proportion of quality fact checkers and editors has somehow degraded in the last x* years. The only things that I think have changed are the _widely-held perception_ that journalism is somehow terrible now, and the explosion of news being distributed in social media. The first is just standard tongue-clucking about the decline of democratic society; the second is about information being distributed at a totally new velocity and availability. I have no idea how the future will deal with that, the effect is only just beginning.
* I'm not sure over what time period your proposed decline is supposed to have taken place.
I provided examples of high-level resignations with detailed explanations as to their reasons. A famed founder of the paper leaves it because he's stopped from publishing a major election story. A decidedly left-wing opinion writer is attacked by peers as if she's some sort of right-wing extremist and decides to resign. Both say this sort of thing couldn't happen just a few years ago. If you claim that this was commonplace since 1996, where are your examples of such occurrences?
Sure, all of these are examples of journalists leaving for ideological or ethical disputes with their employer.
For her frustration with liberal bias: https://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/03/sharyl-attkisso...
For a feeling that the paper is blocking his investigation: https://www.cjr.org/q_and_a/paul_watson_may_be_the.php
For disagreement about Israel: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/politics/cnn-anchor-resigns-after-c...
For concerns about corporate interests: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/why-i-have-...
For feeling that he cannot write about Sheldon Adelson: https://www.salon.com/2016/04/27/journalist_resigns_after_ba...
I didn’t go too far back, but heres one from 1998, for disagreement about revealing personal details: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-sep-30-mn-27898...
For her frustration with liberal bias: https://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/03/sharyl-attkisso...
For a feeling that the paper is blocking his investigation: https://www.cjr.org/q_and_a/paul_watson_may_be_the.php
For disagreement about Israel: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/politics/cnn-anchor-resigns-after-c...
For concerns about corporate interests: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/why-i-have-...
For feeling that he cannot write about Sheldon Adelson: https://www.salon.com/2016/04/27/journalist_resigns_after_ba...
I didn’t go too far back, but heres one from 1998, for disagreement about revealing personal details: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-sep-30-mn-27898...
A lot of these examples have nothing to do with political ideology. Some that do point in the direction of the problem I was talking about.
2014: Sharyl Attkisson worked for CBS for two decades, heavily criticized Obama administration and yet left on "amicable" terms (according to that article).
2020: Bari Weiss (who isn't exactly a pro-Trump Republican) faced "constant bullying" from colleagues at NYT, attacks from them on Twitter and on internal Slack. Less you think it's her personal problem, James Bennet was forced to resign from NYT for allowing a republican senator to publish an OP-ED.
Does it not seem like there was a shift of some sort? Well, apparently Attkisson herself published several books claiming that things have changed:
https://www.amazon.com/Sharyl-Attkisson/e/B001IYXCFM/ref=dp_...
2014: Sharyl Attkisson worked for CBS for two decades, heavily criticized Obama administration and yet left on "amicable" terms (according to that article).
2020: Bari Weiss (who isn't exactly a pro-Trump Republican) faced "constant bullying" from colleagues at NYT, attacks from them on Twitter and on internal Slack. Less you think it's her personal problem, James Bennet was forced to resign from NYT for allowing a republican senator to publish an OP-ED.
Does it not seem like there was a shift of some sort? Well, apparently Attkisson herself published several books claiming that things have changed:
https://www.amazon.com/Sharyl-Attkisson/e/B001IYXCFM/ref=dp_...
In addition to this: traditional media organizations provide a training space for new writers, journalists etc. You can argue that that strengthens the status quo, but Substack provides nothing to promote new talent.
Isn’t escaping editorial teams exactly the reason that many migrated to Substack?
A big reason people are on the platform is because they want to read Glenn Greenwald or Andrew Sullivan or Matt Yglesias in a way that’s not filtered by their previous editorial teams.
A big reason people are on the platform is because they want to read Glenn Greenwald or Andrew Sullivan or Matt Yglesias in a way that’s not filtered by their previous editorial teams.
I take the point for sure, and escaping constraints can be valuable - but we must all be familiar with the 'great wo/man' syndrome where everything they say is right and doesn't need editing or even questioning...
Many of the top-paid Substack writers do use part of their revenue to pay an editor.
Surely Scott Alexander is not because lord of mercy is he verbose.
If you're reading an article with a title "Much more than you ever wanted to know about..." then you can't claim you haven't been warned. For people that can't deal with it there's always twitter (and insane people that publish a full-size article as a thread of 285 tweets, God bless thread aggregators).
What about all the other articles, which are not titled "Much more than..."?
What about the individual paragraphs, with their unendurable periphrasis and opacity?
What about the individual paragraphs, with their unendurable periphrasis and opacity?
If the writing style bothers you that much then why do you read it?
The argument here is pretty weak. Yes, all that Substack really is is blogging but with better monetization. Yes, if Substack is to make money then it probably won't be accessible to the widest possible audience. But that's not enough to conclude that it can't be gamechanging. Kickstarter was "just" a way to monetize, but it's had a dramatic impact; likewise Patreon (and OnlyFans).
> Yes, all that Substack really is is blogging but with better monetization.
That's not even true. Some people enjoy receiving newsletters. Substack gives me a free newsletter platform. I can send out to 100 or 10,000 daily recipients all the same, at no cost. That's actually quite nice and you simply don't get that with vanilla blogging. Newsletters at scale are expensive if you want reliability + frequency. If I just want to operate a free blog and newsletter with eg 10,000 subscribers, with no desire to monetize it at all, I'd otherwise have to eat that cost from my own pocket.
Mailchimp wants $1,200 per year for 120,000 sends per month (10k subscribers * 3 newsletters per week) via their transactional offering. Most people can't justify that if you're not going to monetize.
That's not even true. Some people enjoy receiving newsletters. Substack gives me a free newsletter platform. I can send out to 100 or 10,000 daily recipients all the same, at no cost. That's actually quite nice and you simply don't get that with vanilla blogging. Newsletters at scale are expensive if you want reliability + frequency. If I just want to operate a free blog and newsletter with eg 10,000 subscribers, with no desire to monetize it at all, I'd otherwise have to eat that cost from my own pocket.
Mailchimp wants $1,200 per year for 120,000 sends per month (10k subscribers * 3 newsletters per week) via their transactional offering. Most people can't justify that if you're not going to monetize.
I think a big part of that price is that it's almost impossible to send a newsletter to a significant amount of people with a personal email account. Craig could never have started his list today without paying for Mailchimp.
Right, I think there’s a lot of value in helping people capitalize on an audience they already have. Build your audience on Twitter or twitch or whatever and then you can go from there. This is good actually.
By the way it’s a bit cute to describe some of these authors as simply having “gotten an audience elsewhere”- the other part is how these people get chased out and barred from typical media careers. Glenn Greenwald and Angela Nagle for instance. It’s important that these people have some kind of lifeline.
Also Substack doesn’t have to be for writers exclusively. You can post podcasts on it and video is either already possible or could be.
By the way it’s a bit cute to describe some of these authors as simply having “gotten an audience elsewhere”- the other part is how these people get chased out and barred from typical media careers. Glenn Greenwald and Angela Nagle for instance. It’s important that these people have some kind of lifeline.
Also Substack doesn’t have to be for writers exclusively. You can post podcasts on it and video is either already possible or could be.
"If Substack is successful, it will remind news consumers that paying for good journalism is worth it,” wrote the University of Maine’s Michael Socolow "
Talking about the news doesn't make one a 'journalist'. What was Andrew Sullivan's last scoop?
Reporting, fact-checking, corroborating source statements...this is slow, invisible work. It is the polar opposite of 'content production', which requires a regular posting schedule. With investigative reporting, it's generally not possible to get in your 2 cents out when the topic is still hot in the news cycle.
Yet with Substack, and any other content promotion business, you not only have to come up with original content, but spend time creating graphics and promotional copy and maintaining a presence and 'personality' for Twitter.
It's absurd to think that you're getting an 'insider's scoop with no editorial filter' for anything related to real news.
Talking about the news doesn't make one a 'journalist'. What was Andrew Sullivan's last scoop?
Reporting, fact-checking, corroborating source statements...this is slow, invisible work. It is the polar opposite of 'content production', which requires a regular posting schedule. With investigative reporting, it's generally not possible to get in your 2 cents out when the topic is still hot in the news cycle.
Yet with Substack, and any other content promotion business, you not only have to come up with original content, but spend time creating graphics and promotional copy and maintaining a presence and 'personality' for Twitter.
It's absurd to think that you're getting an 'insider's scoop with no editorial filter' for anything related to real news.
So...
I think there are two seperate things here, besides ownership of the prestige word "journalism."
One is "reporting," which involves fact-checking, corroborating source statements and such. This is, I agree, something that generally needs an organisation.
The other is investigative journalism. This can be done independently & can't be scooped, but it is an incredibly inefficient way of putting ink on paper. Investigations take weeks, months or years and not every investigation finds much worth reporting. This is incredibly important, but god only knows hows its supposed to be funded. Where it is done, its subsidized, cross subsidized, snuck in or done unpaid. This is as much an issue at NYT as it is on substack. There's no known general solution to this problem.
All that said, most of what most people read, listen to and watch is neither of these things. It's commentary and rhetoric. Those aren't bad, they're just overabundant, everywhere... not just substack. In fact, if you take a glance at politically fringe publications like Breitbart, Jacobin, Democracy Now, etc.... You will find that most of it is such content. News first published elsewhere, with new commentary. Its like this everywhere: left, right, centre, establishment, dissident, corporate, independant. If there's intelligent life on mars, I reckon their papers will be full of it too.
I think there are two seperate things here, besides ownership of the prestige word "journalism."
One is "reporting," which involves fact-checking, corroborating source statements and such. This is, I agree, something that generally needs an organisation.
The other is investigative journalism. This can be done independently & can't be scooped, but it is an incredibly inefficient way of putting ink on paper. Investigations take weeks, months or years and not every investigation finds much worth reporting. This is incredibly important, but god only knows hows its supposed to be funded. Where it is done, its subsidized, cross subsidized, snuck in or done unpaid. This is as much an issue at NYT as it is on substack. There's no known general solution to this problem.
All that said, most of what most people read, listen to and watch is neither of these things. It's commentary and rhetoric. Those aren't bad, they're just overabundant, everywhere... not just substack. In fact, if you take a glance at politically fringe publications like Breitbart, Jacobin, Democracy Now, etc.... You will find that most of it is such content. News first published elsewhere, with new commentary. Its like this everywhere: left, right, centre, establishment, dissident, corporate, independant. If there's intelligent life on mars, I reckon their papers will be full of it too.
Substack cuts out the middlemen in opinion journalism and tolerates a wide spectrum of politics. Both is disruptive for entrenched businesses, and both induces anger from less paid and more dogmatic journalists.
Potential failures of Substack are elsewhere - no local coverage, little investigative journalism, a tendency to build bubbles - but as a vehicle to reduce the grip of the anointed "opinion makers" (how I hate this candid expression!) it is very useful.
Potential failures of Substack are elsewhere - no local coverage, little investigative journalism, a tendency to build bubbles - but as a vehicle to reduce the grip of the anointed "opinion makers" (how I hate this candid expression!) it is very useful.
If you don't look too closely, yes. Thing is, as a promotional thing, Substack will give some writers an advance to live off of, and who picks who gets an advance?
The opinion makers working at Substack.
The opinion makers working at Substack.
Substack don't seem interested in opinion making. Perhaps one day they will be, but for now their advances appear to be driven by some very smart BD guys and are given to whoever will be profitable. The story is always the same: they approach some writer who was just attacked by some woke institution and is now out on their own. They tell them, hey, did you know you could make some six figure sum by charging for newsletters? And they say, no you're wrong, I can't earn that much. So they say, OK, we'll give you a much smaller six figure sum guaranteed and take the rest. If we're right, we win. If you're right, you win. Sounds fair? It does, so they say yes. And Substack always wins.
> Perhaps one day they will be
Unfortunately if they survive they will become quite fixated on opinionmaking. It's structurally inevitable, manufacturing consent.
Unfortunately if they survive they will become quite fixated on opinionmaking. It's structurally inevitable, manufacturing consent.
One aspect of unbundling (ads/opinion/news) is that there nothing to subsidize your foreign bureaus or multi-month investigative journalism that may not even pan out, to say nothing of hyper-local news.
Did Medium 'win', though?
Substack only wins if the company goes public. A bunch of paid newsletters isn't going to cover their bills.
Substack only wins if the company goes public. A bunch of paid newsletters isn't going to cover their bills.
Why not? Their bills should be trivial. Substack's tech is primitive, it's basically a (very) basic blogging and commenting platform connected to a mail relay and a billing system. Text is cheap. If Substack can't run the whole tech operation with 5 guys and a tiny hosting bill they're doing something wrong (e.g. probably using AWS).
The cost and innovation at Substack is all business development. Are they cutting good deals? They can prosper. From a software and overheads perspective there's really nothing to see here.
The cost and innovation at Substack is all business development. Are they cutting good deals? They can prosper. From a software and overheads perspective there's really nothing to see here.
I have lost count of the number of HN posts questioning why Company X "should" need anything more than Y number of staff. If all it took was the tech stack, then everybody would be on ConvertKit or MailChimp or Tinyletter, companies with a long track record.
And yet, within months of is announcement, Substack is better known than any of those other tools. They are paying six-figure advances to shore up their portfolio of writers. And, like all VC-backed startups, they are spending massively on Google and Facebook ads.
Building name recognition that quickly isn't cheap.
And yet, within months of is announcement, Substack is better known than any of those other tools. They are paying six-figure advances to shore up their portfolio of writers. And, like all VC-backed startups, they are spending massively on Google and Facebook ads.
Building name recognition that quickly isn't cheap.
No, I'm not claiming they aren't spending money. They clearly are, but it's all going on business development to create growth. Unless they mis-manage things in the typical way and end up with 1000 engineers building their own programming language or something, they can scale back on those deals at any point. In fact they have to. The deals that are winning so well for them can't be repeated because they awaken authors to their true value, so next year they won't re-sign them. Nonetheless, the business calculations for this are presumably quite easy to do, so I doubt they will have difficulty converting those writers to profitable revenue streams even if the profits aren't as high as when Substack is exploiting some kind of apparent informational asymmetry.
Book authors have been getting advances against future sales for a long, long time, so it's hardly novel. I'm not really following the the concern.
I'm not expressing concern about Substack's opinion makers here (though there are certainly some very strong thoughts expressed elsewhere about their particular choices), but that due to the economics involved, GP's positioning of Substack as a wholly neutral platform is not entirely correct - Substack's actions with whom they chose to give an advance to constitutes expressing an opinion, however indirectly.
Authors given an advance by Substack are on a much broader ideological spectrum than, say, NYT op-ed columnists.
> Potential failures of Substack are elsewhere - no local coverage
Interestingly, one of the top performing Substacks is a local publication, the Charlotte Ledger: https://www.businessofbusiness.com/articles/local-news-subst...
Interestingly, one of the top performing Substacks is a local publication, the Charlotte Ledger: https://www.businessofbusiness.com/articles/local-news-subst...
>There is one important difference: Substack has better, more flexible tools for payment than blogging ever had.
There are two more key differences: Substack has serious marketing effort behind it. Big scale, well thought ought, multi-channel and multi-platform. It's the proverbial tide that rises all boats - the ones that docked at the Substack harbor, that is.
The other substantive advantage is uniform and clear user (reader) interface. The value of which cannot be over-stated for ease and please of focusing on the content, for comfortable familiarity, and for fast, smooth performance. It stands in stark contrast with ad-laden, noisy and ad-hoc interface of most online publications, be it newspapers or blogs. Its structure is very clear "flat trees", giving an almost linear navigating experience - as opposed to the multiply linked graphs of typical publications. The constrained options of Substack allow it to be, and remain, great. It even passes the "works just as well without adblock" test.
At the risk of doing it disservice by the way of risky comparison, Substack is everything that Google Amp ever wanted to be - and without the warts.
There are two more key differences: Substack has serious marketing effort behind it. Big scale, well thought ought, multi-channel and multi-platform. It's the proverbial tide that rises all boats - the ones that docked at the Substack harbor, that is.
The other substantive advantage is uniform and clear user (reader) interface. The value of which cannot be over-stated for ease and please of focusing on the content, for comfortable familiarity, and for fast, smooth performance. It stands in stark contrast with ad-laden, noisy and ad-hoc interface of most online publications, be it newspapers or blogs. Its structure is very clear "flat trees", giving an almost linear navigating experience - as opposed to the multiply linked graphs of typical publications. The constrained options of Substack allow it to be, and remain, great. It even passes the "works just as well without adblock" test.
At the risk of doing it disservice by the way of risky comparison, Substack is everything that Google Amp ever wanted to be - and without the warts.
> It even passes the "works just as well without adblock" test.
From a visual perspective yes. However i must note without a JS blocker snowden's article from yesterday will weigh 2.41MB, including 1.22MB JS file, which is insane! Disabling JS brings it down to 1.16MB where images are the heaviest files, with about 40-210KB per image, which is reasonable.
So, despite all the bad things i think about that kind of industry, i must recognize that their website works well without JavaScript, does not block Tor users, and is not excessively heavy to load once you have disabled JS. I'm ashamed to say it because it should be the minimum quality requirement for EVERY website, but congratulations on making an actually usable website in 2021. That's apparently become such a technological challenge that most VC-funded startups are incapable to do it.
It almost makes me want to pay a subscription! But of course i won't do it, since Substack is not a non-profit. There's no reason i should subsidize evil capitalist shareholders with the little money i have to live, i'd much rather use it to support artists and developers directly via liberapay, opencollective and other more ethical venues that do not encourage centralized hosting of content.
From a visual perspective yes. However i must note without a JS blocker snowden's article from yesterday will weigh 2.41MB, including 1.22MB JS file, which is insane! Disabling JS brings it down to 1.16MB where images are the heaviest files, with about 40-210KB per image, which is reasonable.
So, despite all the bad things i think about that kind of industry, i must recognize that their website works well without JavaScript, does not block Tor users, and is not excessively heavy to load once you have disabled JS. I'm ashamed to say it because it should be the minimum quality requirement for EVERY website, but congratulations on making an actually usable website in 2021. That's apparently become such a technological challenge that most VC-funded startups are incapable to do it.
It almost makes me want to pay a subscription! But of course i won't do it, since Substack is not a non-profit. There's no reason i should subsidize evil capitalist shareholders with the little money i have to live, i'd much rather use it to support artists and developers directly via liberapay, opencollective and other more ethical venues that do not encourage centralized hosting of content.
Good points about JS and Tor, thank you!
>That's apparently become such a technological challenge
I suppose it's more of an organizational challenge. Various factors like the difficulty of quantifying product- or service-manager productivity, or mistaking casual mass audience for core, engaged audience, etc.
Our culture still perceives interactive services and electronic content way too heavily through the lens of factory-like production of more countable widgtes, rather than of culture-and-religion like managing by making opinionated decisions, integrating things into cohesive, fractal form, and building lasting epic stories.
>There's no reason i should subsidize evil capitalist shareholders with the little money i have to live
Since I disagree with your stance :-) I'll propose a middle ground: try to compare various available payment/contribution channels with regards to: how large % they forward to the creator vs the cut taken, and how small is the channel's undue influence on the host socio-political system and the creators. Notably the (traditional) banking system, including some "bridge" companies like PayPal, fail the later part very much; they extend undue influence both broad socio-political, and also over the creators. Conversely, a specialized "patronize your favorite creator" services like SubscribeStar seems to be quite neutral. Of course nothing beats a direct payment :-)
>That's apparently become such a technological challenge
I suppose it's more of an organizational challenge. Various factors like the difficulty of quantifying product- or service-manager productivity, or mistaking casual mass audience for core, engaged audience, etc.
Our culture still perceives interactive services and electronic content way too heavily through the lens of factory-like production of more countable widgtes, rather than of culture-and-religion like managing by making opinionated decisions, integrating things into cohesive, fractal form, and building lasting epic stories.
>There's no reason i should subsidize evil capitalist shareholders with the little money i have to live
Since I disagree with your stance :-) I'll propose a middle ground: try to compare various available payment/contribution channels with regards to: how large % they forward to the creator vs the cut taken, and how small is the channel's undue influence on the host socio-political system and the creators. Notably the (traditional) banking system, including some "bridge" companies like PayPal, fail the later part very much; they extend undue influence both broad socio-political, and also over the creators. Conversely, a specialized "patronize your favorite creator" services like SubscribeStar seems to be quite neutral. Of course nothing beats a direct payment :-)
There's two premises I disagree with in this article, one subjective, one objective.
The subjective disagreement is that the trend/bubble towards more and more subscriptions is going to burst all of a sudden. From what I've seen in the mobile app world, it's now at least a 5-year trend towards more and more paid subscription apps being successful, more and more consumers willing to pay x$/month for things they wouldn't ever consider paying for before, etc. And yes, it's not billions of people, but you don't need billions of subscribers to run a successful business with subscriptions. And the same thing is happening with Patreon, Substack, even OnlyFans. And same as with mobile apps, so it is with creators, not all apps are worth the monthly fee, and not all creators are worth the monthly fee. The business model is not a revenue guarantee, it's a revenue possibility. And yes, as with any other solo business, it's extremely hard to stand out in blogging. You have to be a great writer, you have to know how to build an audience, and you have to consistently deliver that great writing to this audience. And there's about a few million other bloggers out there, with the same goal. There's no business model that's going to pay all of them well. But having the possibility of paying writers directly, simply and easily, is a very worthy evolution for the writer space. It's not going to save millions of bloggers/writers who believe the business model is the issue though.
The objective disagreement is that Substack is only successful due to having VC cash to throw at writers to come to their platform. Yes, they have VC cash, and they have offered great upfront deals to writers. But Scott Alexander wrote a good post on this subject, revealing the details of his deal (https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/adding-my-data-point-t...). Long story short, in basically all cases that he is aware of, his own and others, the deal that Substack offered was great, great enough to jump ship quickly, but in nearly all cases, the writer would have been better off not taking the deal, and just taking the usual Substack cut of the revenue offered to all writers, as the eventual subscriber revenue was bigger than the already big upfront deal.
That makes me think that even once the VC cash dries out, subscriber revenue is going to be a pretty good driver of the business going forward.
The subjective disagreement is that the trend/bubble towards more and more subscriptions is going to burst all of a sudden. From what I've seen in the mobile app world, it's now at least a 5-year trend towards more and more paid subscription apps being successful, more and more consumers willing to pay x$/month for things they wouldn't ever consider paying for before, etc. And yes, it's not billions of people, but you don't need billions of subscribers to run a successful business with subscriptions. And the same thing is happening with Patreon, Substack, even OnlyFans. And same as with mobile apps, so it is with creators, not all apps are worth the monthly fee, and not all creators are worth the monthly fee. The business model is not a revenue guarantee, it's a revenue possibility. And yes, as with any other solo business, it's extremely hard to stand out in blogging. You have to be a great writer, you have to know how to build an audience, and you have to consistently deliver that great writing to this audience. And there's about a few million other bloggers out there, with the same goal. There's no business model that's going to pay all of them well. But having the possibility of paying writers directly, simply and easily, is a very worthy evolution for the writer space. It's not going to save millions of bloggers/writers who believe the business model is the issue though.
The objective disagreement is that Substack is only successful due to having VC cash to throw at writers to come to their platform. Yes, they have VC cash, and they have offered great upfront deals to writers. But Scott Alexander wrote a good post on this subject, revealing the details of his deal (https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/adding-my-data-point-t...). Long story short, in basically all cases that he is aware of, his own and others, the deal that Substack offered was great, great enough to jump ship quickly, but in nearly all cases, the writer would have been better off not taking the deal, and just taking the usual Substack cut of the revenue offered to all writers, as the eventual subscriber revenue was bigger than the already big upfront deal.
That makes me think that even once the VC cash dries out, subscriber revenue is going to be a pretty good driver of the business going forward.
Hasn't it? I juggle my video consumption between Hulu, Netflix, Disney+, HBO, CBS, AppleTV, whatever; choosing to have only one/month at a time. Maybe I'm in the extreme minority with going to that effort to save a couple bucks, but that seems like the bubble bursting to me. Netflix gets a fraction of as much of my money as it used to.
Substack doesn’t publish a list of all funded writers so we really don’t know if this is broadly true. Unsuccessful substacks don’t get much pub so it makes sense we wouldn’t have heard from them.
That being said, it seems every writer I’m familiar with that launched one has been successful
That being said, it seems every writer I’m familiar with that launched one has been successful
Quite right. Although conversely, if Substack is taking VC cash and throwing it away on advances to unsucessful authors nobody is reading...
...then that also can't explain their success, because that's content nobody is reading?
...then that also can't explain their success, because that's content nobody is reading?
"Been done before" is a pointless criticism. Yes, "blogging" reduced to a bare bones definition, has been invented and reinvented since before it was a term. That means very little though. It's subtleties, norms and culture that make these mediums what they are.
If Patreon, twitch, only fans and now youtube can support a direct-to-creator subscription culture, why not journalism?
In any case, the economic woes of journalism transcend medium and specific formulations of a business model. Whether the incentive is eyeballs for advertising, an enthusiastic core for patronage or whatnot... it seems to always be at odds with journalism's financially independent mission.
100 articles commenting on the commentary or covering the coverage are the same amount of work as one, important, investigative piece. If that work is genuinely important, the information will be republished hundreds of times, and that's how most people will consume it. That's where money will go, whether through subscriptions, patronage or advertising. I don't think there is a way of having good incentives in the news business. Hard journalism is always subsidized some way, whether that's government subsidies or cross subsidies.
Substack is, I think, a decent place for "independent voices." Individuals respected within a clique, commenting and highlighting issues of the day. It's probably not going to fund investigative journalism, and neither is any straightforward model. Public information is a public good. It's hard to get around that.
If Patreon, twitch, only fans and now youtube can support a direct-to-creator subscription culture, why not journalism?
In any case, the economic woes of journalism transcend medium and specific formulations of a business model. Whether the incentive is eyeballs for advertising, an enthusiastic core for patronage or whatnot... it seems to always be at odds with journalism's financially independent mission.
100 articles commenting on the commentary or covering the coverage are the same amount of work as one, important, investigative piece. If that work is genuinely important, the information will be republished hundreds of times, and that's how most people will consume it. That's where money will go, whether through subscriptions, patronage or advertising. I don't think there is a way of having good incentives in the news business. Hard journalism is always subsidized some way, whether that's government subsidies or cross subsidies.
Substack is, I think, a decent place for "independent voices." Individuals respected within a clique, commenting and highlighting issues of the day. It's probably not going to fund investigative journalism, and neither is any straightforward model. Public information is a public good. It's hard to get around that.
The problem with Blogging is that it got eaten by marketing drone teams. Most blog entries nowadays are just SEO optimised articles written by a marketing intern who has no clue of what he is writing about.
There is no one single reason for everything. Web traffic started centralizing around social media sites over a decade ago, and bloggers themselves pushed their readers to 'interact' on Facebook and Twitter.
They are writers, not tech ecosystem experts, so it didn't occur to them that Facebook and Twitter would take steps to keep people on their platform, and discourage them from linking out.
They are writers, not tech ecosystem experts, so it didn't occur to them that Facebook and Twitter would take steps to keep people on their platform, and discourage them from linking out.
> “Since I closed down the Dish, my bloggy website, five years ago, after 15 years of daily blogging,” he wrote, “I have not missed the insane work hours that all but broke my health.”
> Somehow Sullivan has convinced himself that things will be different at Substack. Maybe he should have checked in with Patrice Peck, a journalist who publishes a Substack newsletter in relative obscurity called Coronavirus News for Black Folks. According to an article by Clio Chang in the Columbia Journalism Review, Peck has discovered that overwork and burnout are just as real for newsletter writers as they are for bloggers. (And why would we think otherwise?)
We might think otherwise, because if you have a newsletter you don't have to publish something all the time, because you don't rely on people checking your site. (Which they might stop doing if there isn't something new every time they check.)
> Somehow Sullivan has convinced himself that things will be different at Substack. Maybe he should have checked in with Patrice Peck, a journalist who publishes a Substack newsletter in relative obscurity called Coronavirus News for Black Folks. According to an article by Clio Chang in the Columbia Journalism Review, Peck has discovered that overwork and burnout are just as real for newsletter writers as they are for bloggers. (And why would we think otherwise?)
We might think otherwise, because if you have a newsletter you don't have to publish something all the time, because you don't rely on people checking your site. (Which they might stop doing if there isn't something new every time they check.)
Back in the day, many people used RSS so they didn't have to check a site all the time. Even if it's push, if I'm paying for something and I seem to rarely get an email, I'll probably stop paying.
It doesn’t have to be original or be lucrative for the small. Like so many other successful services it is packaged well and just works, while building on established ideas.
Substack expects me to agree to a long EULA before they will permit me to give them money. Seems crazy to me.
What paid services do you use that don't require you to accept an EULA??
The newspapers and books I buy with cash, for starters...
Those aren't services, those are objects. You don't post comments in the book that everyone can then instantly read, like you do on Substack.
I remember getting a $50.00 cheque in 2007 from the now-defunct Epinions.com website when my review of an MP3 player hit 10,000 views.
Different kind of business, but I never signed any EULA with them. Just signed up for an account to post.
Different kind of business, but I never signed any EULA with them. Just signed up for an account to post.
Is there a hype?
I'm a person who makes most of their money with blogging and I only heard bad things about Substack.
I'm a person who makes most of their money with blogging and I only heard bad things about Substack.
Any tips for someone trying to get to the same point? I have a couple of substacks (https://graphs4sci.substack.com/ and https://viz4sci.substack.com/) and medium (https://medium.data4sci.com/).
I'm stuck roughly at the "vacation money" threshold (a few thousand a year, enough for a nice vacation or three but not enough to live off of) which certainly isn't bad for something I do essentially on weekends but the medium term goal is to be able to mostly live off of it
I'm stuck roughly at the "vacation money" threshold (a few thousand a year, enough for a nice vacation or three but not enough to live off of) which certainly isn't bad for something I do essentially on weekends but the medium term goal is to be able to mostly live off of it
Look for a content agency to write for.
It's not presige work, but I always can get a bunch of payed articles if nothing else comes in.
It's not presige work, but I always can get a bunch of payed articles if nothing else comes in.
Substack is a blogging tool (an inadequate one with a poor CMS)+ Payment tool (uses Stripe)+ VC money and hype to create "excitement" and uses some white label service to distribute. It got coverage because star journalists joined it with eye-popping figures. Does it trickle down to others? Your luck will depend on discoverability- a mechanism which Subtack controls.
We think it's deplorable that a concerted effort was made to dilute the Markov chain ranking of James Halliday ( aka the actual Substack ) for not wanting to play games with you. James has the quantum entanglement crystal and there is nothing you can do about it.
Beam me up, Alf!
Substack looks like blogging/newsletter plus Patreon (and probably some ancillary services - I read once that they would offer some kind of legal representation). I think this post errs in not bringing up the Patreon comparison. I'm unaware of any major media empires funded via Patreon, but it seems to provide enough of an income to support many YouTubers, podcasters, etc. I think only extreme news junkies would subscribe to more than one newspaper and maybe a few magazines, just as the post argues. But I think Patreon proves that there is a larger market for people directly subscribing to people's writing to support an individual creator's distinctive voice.
Maybe not empires per se, but many fiction publications are using Patreon as a revenue-generating tool.
why do we call blogging journalism as if they have the same standard? Do you expect a blog post to be fact-checked? Do you sue bloggers when they write something damaging to your brand?
Even the major papers have had some pretty serious gaffes in the fact-checking department in recent years. That's kind of the major complaint with modern media houses: they don't do their purported jobs anymore. Book publishers don't really edit and promote books anymore, they leverage established e-authors. Game companies don't make new games anymore, they rebundle old games with a slot-machine monetization system. And news media doesn't edit or fact check anymore, they fight for clicks.
Mmmm, those sweet, sweet clicks. Come children, we shall eat well tonight.
Mmmm, those sweet, sweet clicks. Come children, we shall eat well tonight.
yeah in that case just call journalism dead, instead of calling something else journalism
Bloggers have been sued, yes.
I think Substack is onto something and enjoy it both as a subscriber and a contributor. For one thing newspapers and their ilk want to drive my attention. I don't want that. With Substack I can pick the topics and writers I'm interested in and then easily see and read new articles. And while there are all kinds of writers on Substack I am on the business/technology/investment side so my "DIY magazine" is really a collection of analysis and commentary. You might call this a niche but some might be pretty large and a collection of them might be very big indeed.
Also consider Bloomberg author Matt Levine. Fortunately we can read him for free (in exchange for a couple of non-intrusive embedded ads) but if Bloomberg put his material behind their paywall I would not pay $300-400 per year to them in order to read it. I'd certainly be willing to pay $5/month for him though. The other super annoying thing about these aggregators is that they push advertising to you even after you are a paying subscriber! Paying for content that also sends me advertising is a non-starter for me.
Also consider Bloomberg author Matt Levine. Fortunately we can read him for free (in exchange for a couple of non-intrusive embedded ads) but if Bloomberg put his material behind their paywall I would not pay $300-400 per year to them in order to read it. I'd certainly be willing to pay $5/month for him though. The other super annoying thing about these aggregators is that they push advertising to you even after you are a paying subscriber! Paying for content that also sends me advertising is a non-starter for me.
Duh, (before reading the article) I thought "substack" was a software thing. Maybe a stack below the main stack?
Glenn Greenwald and others move there because they got censored elsewhere. Glenn in his own founded news site, the intercept, because he dared talk about something that could affect Biden's chance of winning.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-the-int...
If you don't address that then you're missing the mark.
Btw, we are already seeing attacks and attempts to control substack. Can't have a medium becoming popular with wrongthink now, can we?
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-the-int...
If you don't address that then you're missing the mark.
Btw, we are already seeing attacks and attempts to control substack. Can't have a medium becoming popular with wrongthink now, can we?
Substack is funded by VCs, as noted in The Famous Article.
To own someone's debt is to control them. One wonders how long the vibrant opinion will take to shift to propaganda when that debt is bought up by entities with an agenda.
To own someone's debt is to control them. One wonders how long the vibrant opinion will take to shift to propaganda when that debt is bought up by entities with an agenda.
That's correct but doesn't really change his analysis of substack. I do think it's a place where a number of important journalists have gone, like Glenn, Ed Snowden and others.
Because Greenwald helpfully published his correspondence with his editors (https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-edito...), as a former journalist I can tell you that the term-of-art for that is "editing," and that this is precisely what editors do every day for every journalist (especially in the better quality organisations). And yes, in many cases editing might reflect the biases of the publication. Editing in the WSJ has a different ideological bias from editing in the NYT. You can think it's bad, and you can even call it censorship if you like, but just so you know, when journalists say "editing," this is the thing they're referring to.
This is why many professional journalist were peeved with Greenwald when he presented the exact same experience all journalists face every day as a normal part of their job as censorship. I guess editing is a censorship of sorts, as is code review and manager approval, but just as programmers say "code review" when they mean that particular kind of censorship, journalists say "editing" when they mean the very ordinary kind of censorship in that correspondence between Greenwald and his editors. When you get a job as a writer, you accept that the editors will "censor" you, because "censoring" is their job, and "being censored" is a part of yours. Like countless journalists before him, Greenwald wasn't happy with the editing his piece received, so he left for a venue with editing that's more to his liking, which in this particular case means virtually none.
This is why many professional journalist were peeved with Greenwald when he presented the exact same experience all journalists face every day as a normal part of their job as censorship. I guess editing is a censorship of sorts, as is code review and manager approval, but just as programmers say "code review" when they mean that particular kind of censorship, journalists say "editing" when they mean the very ordinary kind of censorship in that correspondence between Greenwald and his editors. When you get a job as a writer, you accept that the editors will "censor" you, because "censoring" is their job, and "being censored" is a part of yours. Like countless journalists before him, Greenwald wasn't happy with the editing his piece received, so he left for a venue with editing that's more to his liking, which in this particular case means virtually none.
> This is why many professional journalist were peeved with Greenwald
It's more likely that professional journalists were and are pissed with Greenwald because Greenwald exposes the cliquishness, triviality, and venality of the whole profession.
It's more likely that professional journalists were and are pissed with Greenwald because Greenwald exposes the cliquishness, triviality, and venality of the whole profession.
Be that as it may, what he calls censoring is just your ordinary editing.
This is why many professional journalist were peeved with Greenwald when he presented the exact same experience all journalists face every day as a normal part of their job as censorship.
That's one version, but another way to interpret it is left-leaning journalist outfits made the 2016 mistake of focusing too much on Julian Assange and the emails fiasco around election time. In their minds, that cost Hillary the election, and they didn't want to do the same thing again with Biden and his son's laptop. And seeing as how virtually no left-leaning publication reported on it, this seems the more likely version of events.
That's one version, but another way to interpret it is left-leaning journalist outfits made the 2016 mistake of focusing too much on Julian Assange and the emails fiasco around election time. In their minds, that cost Hillary the election, and they didn't want to do the same thing again with Biden and his son's laptop. And seeing as how virtually no left-leaning publication reported on it, this seems the more likely version of events.
Right wing media stopped talking about it immediately after it had no value to swing the election, which is telling as to how credible the accusations were.
I'm only talking about the reaction to how Greenwald presented the events that led to his departure. What happened to him is called editing, and is a mundane experience for journalists (even though it is, at times, aggravating, and occasionally causes journalists to switch jobs). There was nothing out of the ordinary about it (although it might have been out of the ordinary for Greenwald at The Intercept).
Bias is not just normal; it is unavoidable. Greenwald himself is biased. Professionally and ethically speaking, the only question is whether that editing action deliberately tried to manipulate the truth. From the correspondence it is perfectly clear that it did not -- the editor told him to tone down the rhetoric and/or remove things he did not actually know (or could support) -- and so it was also a pretty professional act of editing.
What you're describing might well be the reason for the editorial caution they exercised in this case, but it certainly did not exceed the boundaries of ordinary, professional editing.
Bias is not just normal; it is unavoidable. Greenwald himself is biased. Professionally and ethically speaking, the only question is whether that editing action deliberately tried to manipulate the truth. From the correspondence it is perfectly clear that it did not -- the editor told him to tone down the rhetoric and/or remove things he did not actually know (or could support) -- and so it was also a pretty professional act of editing.
What you're describing might well be the reason for the editorial caution they exercised in this case, but it certainly did not exceed the boundaries of ordinary, professional editing.
There's also some evidence Greenwald had been planning to leave The Intercept before this collision [1]. The outrage over 'censoring' a clearly bullshit story seems pretty convenient.
[1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/10/inside-glenn-greenwa...
[1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/10/inside-glenn-greenwa...
> “If Substack is successful, it will remind news consumers that paying for good journalism is worth it,” wrote the University of Maine’s Michael Socolow for The Conversation. “But if Substack’s pricing precludes widespread distribution of its news and commentary, its value as a public service won’t be fully realized.”
Is this basically saying that authors need to keep their content freely accessible so that Substack provides a wider public good? If so then I would say that this is already the case. Most authors keep nearly all their content publicly visible. Those who subscribe do so to support good work, not to gain exclusivity. In that sense, the community/content model is more like Patreon than Only Fans.
In my opinion what makes Substack great is its lack of censorship (encouraging a diversity of thought), the fact that readers pay individual authors (unlike medium where you pay for access to the whole site), and the fact that making/collecting payments is easy for users/authors. Sure you can host your own Wordpress and hook up a payment mechanism and all that - but there’s a certain degree of trust and convenience that Substack offers eager subscribers. I feel its payments appeal is a lot like tipping via rewards in the Brave browser (https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360021123971-How...) but more accessible and understandable to the layperson.
Is this basically saying that authors need to keep their content freely accessible so that Substack provides a wider public good? If so then I would say that this is already the case. Most authors keep nearly all their content publicly visible. Those who subscribe do so to support good work, not to gain exclusivity. In that sense, the community/content model is more like Patreon than Only Fans.
In my opinion what makes Substack great is its lack of censorship (encouraging a diversity of thought), the fact that readers pay individual authors (unlike medium where you pay for access to the whole site), and the fact that making/collecting payments is easy for users/authors. Sure you can host your own Wordpress and hook up a payment mechanism and all that - but there’s a certain degree of trust and convenience that Substack offers eager subscribers. I feel its payments appeal is a lot like tipping via rewards in the Brave browser (https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360021123971-How...) but more accessible and understandable to the layperson.
It's not true that Substack is "uncensored". It wouldn't last long if it was. https://substack.com/content
If you're just getting started in the realm of business content, you're welcome to post at https://biztoc.com * until you build out your own homebase.
*(A Mark Cuban Venture I launched)
*(A Mark Cuban Venture I launched)
The logic is simple: an individual writer is always relatively niche. Niche means small audience. Small audience means you have to charge more per person to cover your costs.
Maybe Substack will go the Medium way and try to aggregate, or encourage its writers to aggregate. If so, then it could succeed, but it'll succeed by becoming a newspaper. The problem is that the NYT, Guardian, Mail etc. have a lot of experience at doing aggregation well. (Each day has an appropriate mix of home, foreign, finance, and sports. The day's editorial chimes with what the front page journalists wrote about. Long run investigations are funded in the hope of big payoffs. Et cetera.) Medium hasn't really broken through, I think Substack would struggle.
An alternative is the status quo: Substack is a perfectly viable blogging tool, where aspiring journalists and writers like me [1] give away content for free, in the hope of breaking through to the next level, and where a few people make a good living. But if so Substack will fit into the existing landscape, rather than disrupting it.
[1] https://wyclif.substack.com