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AMA with Substack and Matt Taibbi about a new business model for journalism

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: AMA with Substack and Matt Taibbi about a new business model for journalism

#12

Post by internet_jockey »

cjbest wrote: post #8
masfjo wrote: post #4

Follow up, how does Substack improve on what Patreon is doing?

We think Patreon is awesome. It's a great general purpose tool for supporting creators, and the fact that it is so successful shows that people are willing to pay for stuff they value. Substack is focused on letting writers start their own publication - top to bottom - with subscriptions as an integral part.

To add to Chris's point (this is Hamish), I think Substack is just really simple. As a writer, I like the idea of not having to think about building and designing my own site, or coming up with various payment and rewards tiers, so I can focus almost all of my time on writing.

Re: AMA with Substack and Matt Taibbi about a new business model for journalism

#15

Post by aphextron »

How did you guys settle on "Substack"? I only ask because Substack is a really well known handle for one of the most prolific Node ecosystem contributors, and I feel like you guys are going to run into a lot of SEO pain dealing with that.

Re: AMA with Substack and Matt Taibbi about a new business model for journalism

#16

Post by creaghpatr »

MattTaibbi wrote: post #3
masfjo wrote: post #2

As a writer who goes after very powerful people, how does that affect your work in terms of these financiers/banks trying to pressure you or your employers. Are tools like Substack designed to help writers stay independent?

I think that's definitely going to be a major motivation for journalists going forward. The media landscape is becoming more and more rigid and it is becoming harder to challenge certain points through the old networks and newspapers. So having reporters be financially independent would be huge for investigative reporting, which is one of the areas that has been cut the most in the new era of clickbait media. Another…

From an investigative journalism standpoint, hypothetically, do you envision soft releases to your paid subscribers followed by syndicating(?) the greater story to traditional outlet?

>The Substack model could end both direct and indirect censorship.

There will come the inevitable time when Substack will be pressured to censor/boot content creators for all of the usual reasons, especially if it becomes the home of a new investigative journalism model. Does Substack have any particular commitments/limits regarding content?

I like to think the paywalled feedback loop between creators/readers can help isolate controversial journalism topics from drive-by scrutiny by provocateurs of all politics.

Re: AMA with Substack and Matt Taibbi about a new business model for journalism

#17

Post by draw_down »

aphextron wrote: post #15

How did you guys settle on "Substack"? I only ask because Substack is a really well known handle for one of the most prolific Node ecosystem contributors, and I feel like you guys are going to run into a lot of SEO pain dealing with that.

Yeah, I get tripped up on that a lot too.

Re: AMA with Substack and Matt Taibbi about a new business model for journalism

#18

Post by MattTaibbi »

thehigherlife wrote: post #11

Matt, What is your favorite investigative piece you've written?

Wow. I would say -- let me just back up and say that generally the job of investigative reporting is mostly about getting up to speed as quickly as possible about really complicated topics, and then communicating what you've learned in readable prose in as short a time period as possible. So the biggest challenge is when you have the hardest, most complex subjects. After the 2008 crash I was given a general assignment to explain what happened, and since I knew nothing about Wall Street, I basically had to learn about ten years' worth of financial practices in the space of maybe eight weeks. Those early stories about Goldman and AIG were both thrilling and terrifying because it was so much to digest.

Another fun one (in retrospect) - I don't know if this is investigative journalism exactly, but I was once involved with what in hindsight was a very crazy caper: a Russian newspaper called "Stringer," for whom I worked occasionally, had a contact who was willing to sell them a week of wiretapped phone calls from Putin's chief of staff, Alexander Voloshin. I ended up doing the writeup of that story. There were some minor improprieties exposed in the transcripts, but nothing world-shaking. Still, I was so terrified about publishing it that I left the country. And when I returned, I was detained at Sheremetyevo airport for hours. It turned out the problem was an unlamented passport page. I thought I was going to prison forever.

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