I don’t know that Substack subverts the attention economy, so much as has created a platform which benefits from the personas who have won that game. The relationship is one of accretion, not subversion. Take for example, Haley Nahman, whom you raised as an example of a “non-mainstream” voice. If you’re talking about subverting the attention economy, the example doesn’t follow. Nahman was a writer and editor with Man Repeller, and grew her social media following via her visibility with that company (which had 2.5 mil followers before shutting down). That’s not to deny that Nahman is a critical voice worthy of attention, but I don’t think that’s the point here. She had a following via social media, and that following directly translated to her support and following on Substack. I’ve also listened to interviews with a couple of writers on Substack and the advice they gave was to leverage social media and any following they have there to channel readers to their newsletter. If we’re talking about elitism of traditional media, the voices that tend to succeed on Substack are an elitism of a different order: social media popularity.
What about the writers that reject the raison d’être of social media (to steal attention at any social, mental, physical cost to users and society, to deliver shareholders growing financial returns) and don’t want to play by its rules? They stand to lose across the board, even on a platform like Substack.
Unless you determine a way to help readers discover writers beyond the opaque caprice of social media algorithms, or traditional media which continues to be a central means in which writers find readers (and vice versa), Substack hasn’t subverted the attention economy (and isn’t on its way to), and it hasn’t given writers a platform to build a readership outside these models. I appreciate the sentiment expressed here, and the effort, but for now, this remains a nice idea.
I'll add, as the author of a book about racism and sexism in traditional media, that Substack is attractive to me as a way to infuse the information ecosystem with much more ethnic, cultural, gender and thought diversity than is typically found in traditional media because of its longstanding diversity and equity problems.
Thanks, Hamish, this article eloquently describes what I've been feeling for months but had no words for. This week I started my first newsletter on Substack. I'm still figuring it out, starting from scratch. But it feels very empowering as a writer, and hopefully, for readers as well.
Hamish, New writer here on Substack, Wine Wanderings. I agree with your premise. I've attended the Symposium for Professional Wine Writers in Napa for the past 9 years. I could count on one had the number of full-time journalists there. I've been freelancing for 10 years, and finally launched my Substack newsletter in January. It's performing better than I expected. Thank you for voicing the fact that some people who have "stayed too long at the fair."
Reading this article and tne comments are refreshing! I already feel a sense of community outside mainstream media. I too started my newsletter this week and am looking for ways to build an audience outside of promoting via social media. I am looking forward to discovering new writers on substack as well as learning how Substack will help readers find more of the unique content they/we love.
Is it possible for Substackers to team up to offer discounts on essentially combo subscriptions?
For example, I read Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi. I'd like to add some more quality journalists to that list (cobble together my own paper in a way) but paying piecemeal is not efficient time- or money-wise.
OK, and I'm in, having started my Vic’s Mix Substack last year and, yes, only sporadically populating it with entries. I enjoy doing it after 40 years writing for various small publications, mostly as an employee. But I'm not seeing much if any support from the Substack powers about how to grow an audience beyond the "normal" social media channels, importing one's own (aging) address book, etc. Right now it's a time-consuming hobby. I'd love to explore my mind and bleed on the screen for a few bucks one day. I know there are occasional Zoom Substack classes, etc., but … I need help. I won't be doing this for free a year from now.
I write poems, and have recently started a Substack newsletter to share them. They often have a news hook. In providing this platform, Substack has encouraged me to create work that simply wouldn’t have been born otherwise.
thank Lord, thank you for Substack. No more fake news and misinformation from nytimes, washpost, cnbc, bloomberg, etc. Traditional media will try to destroy you, especially the big tech monopoly nytimes... wish you guys all the best luck.
Why do I love Substack? I can get relevant news without political bias or billion dollar corporate agendas. I strongly believe Substack will continue to take market share.
My first journalism job was for an online outlet that was a start-up. They brought me on offering to make me an employee, but that somehow never materialized. I was only ever a contractor. With that they paid well at the beginning, but never regularly. Over time hours kept getting reduced, until it just wasn't viable for a single mom with two kids and a mortgage. I got cover stories for local papers, which in the end paid less than $5 an hour. I pitched solid stories to various outlets that got polite rejections and then were the center of their reporting less than a year later. I applied for the Managing Editor of a local online paper, but had to back out when I found out that they were only offering $26K a year, clearly expecting that some faculty spouse at the local university would be able to take it as some kind of hobby/pin money, because their tenured spouse would be bringing in the "real" bucks.
Substack provides me the platform to write well about what I care about, and I trust that the audience is out there. I'd rather bust my ass to build that audience and feel like I'm in control of my own livelihood than hustle and scrape for scraps from folks who consider me expendable and want me to only write what is going to generate revenue for them without ever passing that along to me as the actual writer of that revenue-generating content.
Great article. I love Substack. It may not be perfect for all things (which nothing is), but it has a real niche and has proven a wonderful oasis (if only for now) for people escaping the horrendous MSM machine as we find more and improved ways to disseminate info in this age of censorship and cancel mobs.
I wonder if I can class myself as a ‘new generation writer’ at 50 😉 I’m very excited to be getting onboard with Substack, it’s early days but what I’ve seen so far has inspired me - isn’t that quintessentially the very best way to start anything - excited and inspired! 👏
The description of being a freelancer is so painfully accurate. Even without a profitable Substack, my newsletter has given me the platform as a young reporter to stand on my own two feet and for no one to have any doubt of what I am about. I didn't have to wait for some higher power to allow me to cover what I am already passionate about. I also can gain much more trust from sources and communities by having something that is completely my own and not tangled in the mess of backwards politics that drags down most all newsrooms. I think main stream media sounds whiny.
I don’t know that Substack subverts the attention economy, so much as has created a platform which benefits from the personas who have won that game. The relationship is one of accretion, not subversion. Take for example, Haley Nahman, whom you raised as an example of a “non-mainstream” voice. If you’re talking about subverting the attention economy, the example doesn’t follow. Nahman was a writer and editor with Man Repeller, and grew her social media following via her visibility with that company (which had 2.5 mil followers before shutting down). That’s not to deny that Nahman is a critical voice worthy of attention, but I don’t think that’s the point here. She had a following via social media, and that following directly translated to her support and following on Substack. I’ve also listened to interviews with a couple of writers on Substack and the advice they gave was to leverage social media and any following they have there to channel readers to their newsletter. If we’re talking about elitism of traditional media, the voices that tend to succeed on Substack are an elitism of a different order: social media popularity.
What about the writers that reject the raison d’être of social media (to steal attention at any social, mental, physical cost to users and society, to deliver shareholders growing financial returns) and don’t want to play by its rules? They stand to lose across the board, even on a platform like Substack.
Unless you determine a way to help readers discover writers beyond the opaque caprice of social media algorithms, or traditional media which continues to be a central means in which writers find readers (and vice versa), Substack hasn’t subverted the attention economy (and isn’t on its way to), and it hasn’t given writers a platform to build a readership outside these models. I appreciate the sentiment expressed here, and the effort, but for now, this remains a nice idea.
I'll add, as the author of a book about racism and sexism in traditional media, that Substack is attractive to me as a way to infuse the information ecosystem with much more ethnic, cultural, gender and thought diversity than is typically found in traditional media because of its longstanding diversity and equity problems.
Thanks, Hamish, this article eloquently describes what I've been feeling for months but had no words for. This week I started my first newsletter on Substack. I'm still figuring it out, starting from scratch. But it feels very empowering as a writer, and hopefully, for readers as well.
Hamish, New writer here on Substack, Wine Wanderings. I agree with your premise. I've attended the Symposium for Professional Wine Writers in Napa for the past 9 years. I could count on one had the number of full-time journalists there. I've been freelancing for 10 years, and finally launched my Substack newsletter in January. It's performing better than I expected. Thank you for voicing the fact that some people who have "stayed too long at the fair."
Reading this article and tne comments are refreshing! I already feel a sense of community outside mainstream media. I too started my newsletter this week and am looking for ways to build an audience outside of promoting via social media. I am looking forward to discovering new writers on substack as well as learning how Substack will help readers find more of the unique content they/we love.
Is it possible for Substackers to team up to offer discounts on essentially combo subscriptions?
For example, I read Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi. I'd like to add some more quality journalists to that list (cobble together my own paper in a way) but paying piecemeal is not efficient time- or money-wise.
OK, and I'm in, having started my Vic’s Mix Substack last year and, yes, only sporadically populating it with entries. I enjoy doing it after 40 years writing for various small publications, mostly as an employee. But I'm not seeing much if any support from the Substack powers about how to grow an audience beyond the "normal" social media channels, importing one's own (aging) address book, etc. Right now it's a time-consuming hobby. I'd love to explore my mind and bleed on the screen for a few bucks one day. I know there are occasional Zoom Substack classes, etc., but … I need help. I won't be doing this for free a year from now.
I write poems, and have recently started a Substack newsletter to share them. They often have a news hook. In providing this platform, Substack has encouraged me to create work that simply wouldn’t have been born otherwise.
thank Lord, thank you for Substack. No more fake news and misinformation from nytimes, washpost, cnbc, bloomberg, etc. Traditional media will try to destroy you, especially the big tech monopoly nytimes... wish you guys all the best luck.
Why do I love Substack? I can get relevant news without political bias or billion dollar corporate agendas. I strongly believe Substack will continue to take market share.
My first journalism job was for an online outlet that was a start-up. They brought me on offering to make me an employee, but that somehow never materialized. I was only ever a contractor. With that they paid well at the beginning, but never regularly. Over time hours kept getting reduced, until it just wasn't viable for a single mom with two kids and a mortgage. I got cover stories for local papers, which in the end paid less than $5 an hour. I pitched solid stories to various outlets that got polite rejections and then were the center of their reporting less than a year later. I applied for the Managing Editor of a local online paper, but had to back out when I found out that they were only offering $26K a year, clearly expecting that some faculty spouse at the local university would be able to take it as some kind of hobby/pin money, because their tenured spouse would be bringing in the "real" bucks.
Substack provides me the platform to write well about what I care about, and I trust that the audience is out there. I'd rather bust my ass to build that audience and feel like I'm in control of my own livelihood than hustle and scrape for scraps from folks who consider me expendable and want me to only write what is going to generate revenue for them without ever passing that along to me as the actual writer of that revenue-generating content.
Well put, Hamish. Ironically, I've noticed the New Yorker running ads in Google to help prop up the very article criticizing Substack for it's "future of media": https://twitter.com/Blogging__Guide/status/1365018918671294467?s=20
Great article. I love Substack. It may not be perfect for all things (which nothing is), but it has a real niche and has proven a wonderful oasis (if only for now) for people escaping the horrendous MSM machine as we find more and improved ways to disseminate info in this age of censorship and cancel mobs.
Hear hear
I wonder if I can class myself as a ‘new generation writer’ at 50 😉 I’m very excited to be getting onboard with Substack, it’s early days but what I’ve seen so far has inspired me - isn’t that quintessentially the very best way to start anything - excited and inspired! 👏
The description of being a freelancer is so painfully accurate. Even without a profitable Substack, my newsletter has given me the platform as a young reporter to stand on my own two feet and for no one to have any doubt of what I am about. I didn't have to wait for some higher power to allow me to cover what I am already passionate about. I also can gain much more trust from sources and communities by having something that is completely my own and not tangled in the mess of backwards politics that drags down most all newsrooms. I think main stream media sounds whiny.