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Sovereign writers and Substack

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Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#41

Post by bko »

danpalmer wrote: post #18

I find the current criticism of Substack quite interesting. It seems to be on the assumption that they are a publisher, or at least a visible brand in the publishing process, and they do indeed appear to be in the middle unlike most companies. It's obvious that the NYT are responsible for what's published on their site, after all it says NYT across the top, NYT on the subscription fee, and they (theoretically) have e…

The publisher model gets thrown around a lot in regards to social media companies like substack. The basic line of reasoning is that, as a publisher, substack would be "responsible" for its content.

But what ways are traditional publishers "responsible" for their content? There's some internal self-imposed responsibility (e.g. someone will be fired due to insensitive tweet), but that's more politics than anything else. Large publishers regularly print patently incorrect data and narratives with no consequences. So maybe this publisher/platform distinction isn't all that meaningful

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#42

Post by x0x0 »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #17
slibhb wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> writing controversial things because it gets more traffic and therefore more income. This is a danger but I'd rather have "controversial" than "if you deviate from the politics of the publication that pays your salary, you get fired". Personally, I like Sullivan, Greenwald, Yglesias, Taibbi, etc. I think Sullivan and Yglesias are not drama queens and that Geenwald and Tiabbi are. But I like all 4, I just think the…

I don't dislike them, I just dislike the idea that becoming a successful journalist will now mean you must also be charismatic, good at attracting attention to yourself, etc.

The word "now" is doing a lot of work there :) So also successful.

Do you think there was really a time that being a really successful journalist didn't require some charisma and a talent for publicity? Maybe the publication handled some of those things, but it doesn't change that they were required.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#43

Post by abhinav22 »

michaelt wrote: post #26

> [...] writers who can command a paying audience have heretofore been significantly underpaid. I don't know for sure, but I suspect the writer-paid-monthly model is straight up more effective at pulling money from readers' pockets than the magazine subscription model. I mean, I can pay £34 a year for a fortnightly magazine with quite a few writers doing quite a lot of investigative journalism, and even mailing a pap…

I think once the novelty wears off and people start seeing how many subscriptions they are on, they will move to consolidated packages covering multiple writers, like Netflix for writing. Which already exists in the sense of Medium.com

Everything reverts to the mean and your point is valid - we shouldn’t expect one form of writing to have abnormally high returns to effort ratio for too long, unless there is a general shift in the value of writing by the population at large. Which given current trends towards video and higher stimulation, I would assume is less likely?

Unless one could argue there’s a huge untapped latent market of bookworms. I think there is some market to a degree as people get burned out on other forms of media, but I’m not sure if it’s large enough for substacks model to work for a significant period in the future

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#44

Post by 762236 »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #3

Of course things aren’t so simple; Sullivan, like several of the other names on that leaderboard, are, to put it gently, controversial. That he along with other lightning-rod writers ended up on Substack is more a matter of where else would they go? While Substack is portrayed as being a good move for writers and journalists (and certainly it is, financially), I don't think this is actually good for journalism as a w…

You've described NY Times and Fox News in how they write controversial things to get more traffic. They share the same world, yet have quite dissimilar front pages, because they're tailoring controversy for the value systems of their audiences. The authors on Substack don't need to seek controversy: they just need to point out the rules of the orthodoxy, and then the controversy follows them.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#45

Post by x0x0 »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #40
inglor_cz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well we are talking more about financial success, right? Or that was my impression from the debate. Even the original article revolves around $$$.

I'm just concerned that journalists will become more like celebrities . Less concerned with the cold facts and more with giving their take. Frankly a similar thing has already happened in the art world. Banksy, Jeff Koons, and Damien Hirst are fantastic marketers, not artists.

Was Ted Koppel really a great journalist?

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#46

Post by ceilingcorner »

x0x0 wrote: post #42
ceilingcorner wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't dislike them, I just dislike the idea that becoming a successful journalist will now mean you must also be charismatic, good at attracting attention to yourself, etc.

The word "now" is doing a lot of work there :) So also successful. Do you think there was really a time that being a really successful journalist didn't require some charisma and a talent for publicity? Maybe the publication handled some of those things, but it doesn't change that they were required.

Of course. Investigative journalism has little to do with building an audience of paying subscribers. When the newspaper handled the business end, the journalists could focus on the journalism.

It wasn't called "loss leader" for nothing.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#47

Post by pavlov »

There seems to be a backlash in progress against Substack's publishing policies.

Last week I finally subscribed on Substack to an art-related list where I had been enjoying the free edition for a while. ($55 / year felt like a pretty good deal for access to more of this interesting content.)

A few days later, the writer announced that they're moving off Substack. I'll just quote their message verbatim:

"I’m planning to switch to my newsletter provider from Substack to Ghost in the near future — if I understand it right, the paid subscriptions can all be migrated, so I don’t think it’ll be a big hiccup on the subscriber end. I’ll let you know when I actually make the switch.

"It’s because I’m concerned with Substack’s marketing plan of subsidizing controversial authors (discourse here: Annaleen Newitz, Emily VanDerWerff, Jude Ellison S. Doyle, Metafilter thread), particularly a weirdly large number that can be reasonably construed as anti-trans. Plus, Graham Linehan still uses the service, despite being kicked off plenty of other platforms for documented anti-trans abuse.

"The media profiting off of platforming anti-trans views was a major impetus behind the rise of anti-trans sentiment in the UK in 2016, and the same seems to be happening in the US (broadly, not just on Substack). Yet Substack’s response seems to pretty bluntly reject the idea that they need to reconsider anything. Even if they ban Linehan in the future, I’ve lost faith in the leadership."

Personally I feel this author is doing the right thing by getting off a platform whose policies they can't support. And it makes me wonder about Substack's stickiness, because as a consumer I certainly don't care one bit which company processes my annual payment and delivers the emails.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#48

Post by ceilingcorner »

762236 wrote: post #44
ceilingcorner wrote: post #3

Of course things aren’t so simple; Sullivan, like several of the other names on that leaderboard, are, to put it gently, controversial. That he along with other lightning-rod writers ended up on Substack is more a matter of where else would they go? While Substack is portrayed as being a good move for writers and journalists (and certainly it is, financially), I don't think this is actually good for journalism as a w…

You've described NY Times and Fox News in how they write controversial things to get more traffic. They share the same world, yet have quite dissimilar front pages, because they're tailoring controversy for the value systems of their audiences. The authors on Substack don't need to seek controversy: they just need to point out the rules of the orthodoxy, and then the controversy follows them.

Yes, so Substack is just kicking the bucket further down the road. Just another game of musical chairs.

I guess it's cool that writers make more money, but I'm not sure this is as revolutionary as it seems.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#49

Post by ceilingcorner »

bhupy wrote: post #21
ceilingcorner wrote: post #3

Of course things aren’t so simple; Sullivan, like several of the other names on that leaderboard, are, to put it gently, controversial. That he along with other lightning-rod writers ended up on Substack is more a matter of where else would they go? While Substack is portrayed as being a good move for writers and journalists (and certainly it is, financially), I don't think this is actually good for journalism as a w…

That's what journalism has always been like, save for a few decades in one specific country (the US). The past few decades of supposed "objectivity" and "neutrality" in American journalism were a historical aberration. https://www.wired.com/story/journalism-isnt-dying-its-return...

Anti-discrimination laws, human rights, and democracy are also historical aberrations. But I think they're kind of worth keeping around.

Perhaps getting accurate facts about the world is also important?

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#50

Post by ghaff »

abhinav22 wrote: post #43
michaelt wrote: post #26

> [...] writers who can command a paying audience have heretofore been significantly underpaid. I don't know for sure, but I suspect the writer-paid-monthly model is straight up more effective at pulling money from readers' pockets than the magazine subscription model. I mean, I can pay £34 a year for a fortnightly magazine with quite a few writers doing quite a lot of investigative journalism, and even mailing a pap…

I think once the novelty wears off and people start seeing how many subscriptions they are on, they will move to consolidated packages covering multiple writers, like Netflix for writing. Which already exists in the sense of Medium.com Everything reverts to the mean and your point is valid - we shouldn’t expect one form of writing to have abnormally high returns to effort ratio for too long, unless there is a general…

I could absolutely see an aggregator model, where the quasi-publisher maybe even provides some degree of editorial support at the copyediting level. The question then becomes though if the $100 or so/year which still seems to me to be the ceiling for something like this is sufficient to support a stable of writers.
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