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

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101–110 of 164 posts

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

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So moral purity is a requirement for notable achievement now?

There's a spectrum between purity and total asshat. Its disingenuous to imply anybody wants them to be perfect. Just not total scumbags maybe?

Sure, but if we judge everyone by their worst actions I'm sure we can implicate a large swath of people who have ever achieved anything. I find Taibbi's work interesting and I would prefer not to deplatform people for actions unrelated to their work. We have a court system for punishing people. While I think it's entirely reasonable not to support someone or their work on moral grounds I would prefer others not to make that decision for me.

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

#102

Why did Substack choose the subscription model? Have you considered the micropayment model instead? Personally, I would much rather pay a small fee for each article I read (provided you remove all the barriers to payment) rather than pay a monthly subscription. I'm curious about the pros and cons of each option

I think micropayments don't work.

Even if you make payment as completely frictionless as possible, there is still the mental overhead of deciding to pay. As the dollar amount gets smaller and smaller, the "pain of deciding to pay" becomes a higher fraction of the total pain, and the economics don't make sense. Plus, if you just charge for each click or whatever, you get the bad incentives of clickbait back.

Subscriptions are great because you only have to make one (big) decision. Subscribing to individual writers is great, because the thing you are deciding is do you like/trust/want to keep reading this writer, which is something that people actually do have strong feelings about.

As distribution has become free, the value of content has been driven to zero. But now the value of curation -- of reading somebody you trust -- gets higher. That's what people are willing to pay for.

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

#103
post #79

Not the kind of trash I want to see on HN: https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_59f7... > On October 27, Aimee Levitt published a piece in The Chicago Reader with the apt title “Twenty years ago, in Moscow, Matt Taibbi was a misogynist asshole—and possible worse.” Taibbi and Mark Ames were co-editors of the the English language gonzo, semi-satirical, semi-muckraking expat newspaper the eXile, where…

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/12/the-destructi...

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

#104
post #79

Not the kind of trash I want to see on HN: https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_59f7... > On October 27, Aimee Levitt published a piece in The Chicago Reader with the apt title “Twenty years ago, in Moscow, Matt Taibbi was a misogynist asshole—and possible worse.” Taibbi and Mark Ames were co-editors of the the English language gonzo, semi-satirical, semi-muckraking expat newspaper the eXile, where…

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/12/the-destructi...

Comparing an errant tweet to Taibbi’s ouvre of misogynist dreck is pretty shameless apologism.

> fell from grace this October after controversial passages from an old book he’d co-authored, The eXile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia, resurfaced and were spread online.

God forbid we judge someone based on a book they published (oh, and the magazine it was based on).

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

#105
post #91
post #80

As someone who reads a lot of serialized content with a wide range of professionalism, what guards are in place to protect users from an author dropping a serialized work that is supposed to have a clear end prior to that end being reached? That is, if I'm reading a book in serialized form from Matt Taibbi (as an example) that I feel invested in the outcome (in this case both figuratively and literally ), and Matt de…

The idea that getting substantial recurring revenue helps put the author in a position to deliver, and avoid the "popular thing gets canceled" effect. The relationship is between the reader and the writer, and the writer puts their reputation behind what they're doing. We see our job as to give them options if unexpected issues come up - pausing subscriptions, partial refunds, or whatever is necessary.

Having seen a number of professional authors recently not quite fall into this, but something similar, in which they get a few books into a series and either lose interest or don't know how to continue, I'm very interested in specialized incentives that could be offered to provide assurance to consumers and keep authors aligned.

For example, an opt-in program where authors allow Substack to keep keep a portion of the monthly revenue until some criteria are hit or some time period passes, whichever is first. For example, if each month 50% of the author's cut is paid out to the author, and the other 50% is kept and paid out in installments based on the number of content posts delivered compared to the author's target. For example, it an author plans to release 4 content posts a month, and their cut is $100 each month, they would be paid $50 for the month, and $50/8 per post after that for that month, so within two months they should get the full amount. After two months there would be an equilibrium and the full amount would be coming in ($50 for current month, $25 for each of the two prior months).

Now, I'm not seriously proposing that exact system, but an opt-in system such as that (with some variation on time frames, etc) which could be have a specific tag would go a long way towards making me feel like I'm investing in something that has a future when I pay, because let's be honest, some authors have been able to coast on a good reputation and some beloved prior works for a long time without needing to put out anything in the same vein. That's their prerogative, but at the same time I'm at the point in my life where time is at a premium, and money is less so than when I was younger, and if I'm going to invest the time and effort into a serialized work, I want to do as much as I can to make sure I'm doing so in something that will see an appropriate end.

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

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/12/the-destructi...

Comparing an errant tweet to Taibbi’s ouvre of misogynist dreck is pretty shameless apologism. > fell from grace this October after controversial passages from an old book he’d co-authored, The eXile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia, resurfaced and were spread online. God forbid we judge someone based on a book they published (oh, and the magazine it was based on).

Well, after the introduction, the article is a detailed explanation of how his work was actually a satire of a specific culture of misogyny.

Was Jonathan Swift an advocate for cannibalism in your eyes as well?

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

#107
Have you been in contact with any of the independent publications that were dumped by Medium last month (see https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/medium-publication.php)? They really harmed a lot of indie publishers doing good work. Your product might be a good fit.

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

#108
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The following isn't phrased how I would put it, but seems apt anyway: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17240003 I am amused that the typo is from "Huffington" rather than "Chicago Reader".

You’re lowering the bar here. If he actually did those things, he should be in jail. I didn’t say he should be in jail. Writing those things , which he undoubtedly did, is an indicator of being a misogynistic asshat. Which isn’t enough for jail, but surely enough to warrant our contempt and distance. (I’m also not saying we should censor him. That’s different than giving him a platform.)

I appreciate your protective feeling for HN, but you're simply wrong about Taibbi. We could lose 90% of our journalists, those whose efforts are primarily focused toward sticking to their assigned scripts, and we would be both better-off and better-informed. Taibbi is not among that 90%. HN is also not about sticking to the script.

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

#109
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re lowering the bar here. If he actually did those things, he should be in jail. I didn’t say he should be in jail. Writing those things , which he undoubtedly did, is an indicator of being a misogynistic asshat. Which isn’t enough for jail, but surely enough to warrant our contempt and distance. (I’m also not saying we should censor him. That’s different than giving him a platform.)

I appreciate your protective feeling for HN, but you're simply wrong about Taibbi. We could lose 90% of our journalists, those whose efforts are primarily focused toward sticking to their assigned scripts, and we would be both better-off and better-informed. Taibbi is not among that 90%. HN is also not about sticking to the script.

The script is protecting sleazy men because they’ve made some contribution we value. That’s not a script we should stick too.

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

#110
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The following isn't phrased how I would put it, but seems apt anyway: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17240003 I am amused that the typo is from "Huffington" rather than "Chicago Reader".

You’re lowering the bar here. If he actually did those things, he should be in jail. I didn’t say he should be in jail. Writing those things , which he undoubtedly did, is an indicator of being a misogynistic asshat. Which isn’t enough for jail, but surely enough to warrant our contempt and distance. (I’m also not saying we should censor him. That’s different than giving him a platform.)

> Writing those things, which he undoubtedly did, is an indicator of being a misogynistic asshat.

That depends entirely on context and intent, doesn't it? As called out in one of the articles on this very subject, as the creators of South Park misogynistic asshats for writing characters that behave in this way, when it's done as satire and to lampoon those that actually act in that manner? That's what the defenders are contending, and what at least some reporting is saying female employee(s) at the time are stating.

If you think the counter-arguments don't hold up, that's one thing, but so far your arguments seem to ignore all the points raised in the Paste magazine article. I'd be interested in what you think about them, since it didn't seem to sway you at all.

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