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Sovereign writers and Substack

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Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#151

Post by qPM9l3XJrF »

karaterobot wrote: post #128

> First, Substack is going to have a serious problem retaining its most profitable writers unless it substantially reduces its 10% take. This is the part I'm having trouble understanding. 10% doesn't seem like a high percentage for a distributor, even if they're just hosting text and images. Of course Substack also provides comments, notifications, admin/moderation, and some degree of marketing and aggregation effect…

Just asking readers/customers to re-enter their payment details on a new platform could easily trigger 10% churn in subscribers no?

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#152

Post by heisenbit »

hdhdbeupphw wrote: post #122
mdoms wrote: post #78

Substack is what happens when the mainstream media elites overplay their hand and force heterodox writers out of the "mainstream". As it turns out there are still plenty of people who want to read this kind of writing, and we don't appreciate the gatekeeping from formerly reputable sources.

The world already has enough clickbait and hot takes. Substack will probably make a lot of money, but it won’t increase the quality of journalism in the US. We need less opinion in our news diet not more.

The focus on less opinion in the US media is misguided. This focus on purity is not leading to better reporting but has lead to honest writers hide their point of view and manipulative writers twisting facts under the presumed cover of neutrality. And it has led to ‚pure’ opinion which can be disconnected from facts and that is tolerated as acceptable.

Imho. US media needs an injection of more common sense through properly contextualized facts - and the human experience of the writer is a big part of this.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#153

Post by JeremyNT »

hdhdbeupphw wrote: post #122
mdoms wrote: post #78

Substack is what happens when the mainstream media elites overplay their hand and force heterodox writers out of the "mainstream". As it turns out there are still plenty of people who want to read this kind of writing, and we don't appreciate the gatekeeping from formerly reputable sources.

The world already has enough clickbait and hot takes. Substack will probably make a lot of money, but it won’t increase the quality of journalism in the US. We need less opinion in our news diet not more.

Yeah, Substack is just the next iteration of Medium.

What's new is that rockstar opinion writers with enough name recognition are able to generate clickbait targeted for their specific followers and make a living in doing so, rather than relying on the opinion sections of major publications. So now i guess the established troll farms like the NYT or WSJ editorial pages are the clickbait minor leagues while Substack is the majors.

This doesn't seem to be any better, really.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#154

Post by ttt0 »

aklemm wrote: post #141
dionian wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, what you say about Reuters and AP are simply not true. And I agree, less opinion is good, especially in the once-reputable legacy mainstream media like the paper of the record, the NYT, which pushed the trump-hater Michael Steele 'pee tape' rumor (and the idea that Trump did not explicitly condemn white supremacy ) amongst others.

The NYT take on Trump not condemning white supremacy only improves my view of the paper. Trump talks out of both sides of his mouth in that scenario (and so many others) as a way to lay an evergreen trap for critics. I want my paper to take a broader view and then make a decision on best possible info; Trump never convincingly condemned white supremacy.

He did explicitly condemn white supremacy.

> As I said on -- remember this -- Saturday, we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence.

> And you had people, and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-charlottesv...

If NYT claimed that he didn't, it's anything but "best possible info". You're not immune to propaganda or misinformation just because you happen to be against Trump.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#155

Post by ReadFList »

How does anyone even take journalists seriously? I could understand that you follow a specific person you believe to be fair and intelligent, but most news orgs are just a bunch of liers and propagandists, just look at the wave of "fact-checkers", from any side of the political spectrum.

When in doubt, a journalist is to be assumed to be a subversive lier until proven innocent.

These are the people who have as greatest award for excellency in their profession, the Pulitzer award, named after a notorious lier (Spanish–American War) and one of the creators of "yellow journalism".

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#156

Post by rchaud »

mdoms wrote: post #78

Substack is what happens when the mainstream media elites overplay their hand and force heterodox writers out of the "mainstream". As it turns out there are still plenty of people who want to read this kind of writing, and we don't appreciate the gatekeeping from formerly reputable sources.

I'd argue Substack is what happens when VCs try to product-ize gonzo journalism.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#157

Post by rchaud »

JeremyNT wrote: post #153
hdhdbeupphw wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world already has enough clickbait and hot takes. Substack will probably make a lot of money, but it won’t increase the quality of journalism in the US. We need less opinion in our news diet not more.

Yeah, Substack is just the next iteration of Medium. What's new is that rockstar opinion writers with enough name recognition are able to generate clickbait targeted for their specific followers and make a living in doing so, rather than relying on the opinion sections of major publications. So now i guess the established troll farms like the NYT or WSJ editorial pages are the clickbait minor leagues while Substack i…

80-20 rule applies. Only a few will become truly well known, and the others will scratch and scrape for crumbs.

Back in the 2000s, 'blogs' were all the rage. It was where 'real journalism' happened, away from the red tape and PC-ness of newsrooms. Sound familiar? 15 years later, somebody like Andrew Sullivan or Breibart are the only 'bloggers' people even remember.

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#158

Post by rchaud »

b215826 wrote: post #131
hdhdbeupphw wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world already has enough clickbait and hot takes. Substack will probably make a lot of money, but it won’t increase the quality of journalism in the US. We need less opinion in our news diet not more.

> We need less opinion in our news diet not more. There still are such news sources -- The Economist , Reuters, AP, etc., rarely editorialize their articles. Most other mainstream news sources like NYT , WSJ , etc., are just as clickbaity and cater to a specific demographic of the society just like Substack writers do. So I don't see it as a loss for journalism if people stopped subscribing to, say The Guardian , and…

Rarely editorialize? The entire magazine is opinion.

The Economist doesn't interview anybody, doesn't cultivate any sources, or ever break any stories. It mostly reads like recent university graduates cosplaying William F Buckley.

Perhaps it just 'feels' like it doesn't editorialize because their writers are all nameless and faceless and share the same ideology, so there is never a difference of opinion. Problem with the economy/society/military? Just deregulate and privatize!

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#159

Post by rchaud »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #23
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…

What do you think about Wordpress as a counterexample? There was a time a decade ago when lots of blogs under the wordpress.com domain; I don't remember anyone being confused or arguing that Wordpress the company was responsible for their content.

That's because WP arrived at a time when corporations weren't selling people pipe dreams about how to get famous and rich on the web through their platform. The motivation to wrote blogs on Xanga, Angelfire, Geocities etc was for recreation, not monetization.

Wordpress offered a self-hosted, open-source blogging platform from day 1, in addition to WYSIWIG Wordpress.org. The idea that WP would attempt to use its audience as some sort of competitive moat is something I could imagine had they arrived 10 years later. Which it did, in the form of Medium.com

Re: Sovereign writers and Substack

#160

Post by rchaud »

zpeti wrote: post #5
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…

My perception of old media is that they are doing exactly this, writing click bait things to get clicks and subs. This is true across the board from CNN to NYT to Fox. At least with substack the incentives are not there for daily churn articles, the journalists have independence to publish when they want to, how they want to, worst case they lost subscribers. I think those incentives make them a lot less likely to ma…

> the journalists have independence to publish when they want to,

This is the same thing that was said about Youtube creators vs network/cable TV shows that follow a regular schedule. Before too long, it became clear that channels needed to post at least one video per week to keep up with their competition and boost subscriber numbers.

I expect the same thing to happen here.

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