Politics | Recovery | Current Obsessions
Let’s set Substack’s “Nazi problem” aside for a moment. What if the bigger issue is being stranded on a collapsing platform... with a bunch of Nazis? Substack's content woes are bound up with its shaky business model in ways that are bad for all of us.
I can smell the burnt coffee from here.
It's Substacks All the Way Down
Last week, Terry Moran announced that he’d be the latest high-profile journalist to take his brand to Substack, following his dismissal from ABC due to having the correct opinion of Stephen Miller. His Real Patriotism now has over 113k subscribers and about a dozen posts.
Puck’s Dylan Byers took the occasion to pull in some reporting by Substacker Eric Newcomer (100k subscribers, claiming revenue of $2M a year, profit of over $1M) about the platform itself, currently in the process of seeking another round of financing. Newcomer framed his gossip about the new round with some fist-pumping at “Trump II” putting Substack “back in the zeitgeist.” Byers asked the reasonable question: If Substack is turning out to be a place of refuge for journalists in the new age of authoritarianism, how sturdy is that refuge?
Now, Substack has also become a mechanism for legacy publications, including The New Republic (where I am a contributing editor), to get in on the newsletter boom. According to Substack, The Washington Post is in talks to move their writers there as well. This burnishes Substack's credibility as a journalism destination and makes Byers' question even more urgent. Again, can this young company handle the weight being thrown upon it? Is it up to the challenge of saving journalism in a robust form?
Byers frames it for Puck’s mostly media-industry readership like this:
Those who have the savvy and stamina to build real businesses that they can migrate elsewhere [after Substack falls] will be in luck. Those who treat the platform as a place to publish the occasional hot take and host video chats with an all-too-familiar cast of fellow green-room denizens almost certainly will not.
My take is more dire, because I’m not sure about “savvy and stamina” as the distinguishing characteristics of those who might be able to migrate elsewhere. I think plenty of smart folks might find themselves stuck.
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