Ben Smith on the rise of Substack and independent journalists [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Ben Smith on the rise of Substack and independent journalists [video]

#21

Post by Evidlo » Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 11:08 AM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #18

reilly3000 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respectfully disagree with your disagreement. The point isn't that journalists need a more rigorous passage into a professional association or credentialling. Its more that journalism is a team effort, where writers, line editors, fact checkers, designers, data folks and others work together to produce an accurate and complete work. You wouldn't take on a big case of national impact entirely solo and expect, and jo…

> Its more that journalism is a team effort, where writers, line editors, fact checkers, designers, data folks and others work together to produce an accurate and complete work. And yet it produces so unbelievably large and frequent issues with the accuracy and completeness that this either does not help, is not the goal, or journalists not working for large publishers must get this wrong all the time, all over the p…

Or possibly standards in journalism have fallen and this is the next step.

Re: Ben Smith on the rise of Substack and independent journalists [video]

#22

Post by dsparkman » Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 2:05 PM UTC

Evidlo wrote: post #21

luckylion wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its more that journalism is a team effort, where writers, line editors, fact checkers, designers, data folks and others work together to produce an accurate and complete work. And yet it produces so unbelievably large and frequent issues with the accuracy and completeness that this either does not help, is not the goal, or journalists not working for large publishers must get this wrong all the time, all over the p…

Or possibly standards in journalism have fallen and this is the next step.

I would say most of what passes for journalism, is no longer journalism.

Journalism is about passing on the who-what-when-where-why. Factual information to the public. You see very little of that these days. Too many opinion in basic article.

Re: Ben Smith on the rise of Substack and independent journalists [video]

#23

Post by cjbest » Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 2:30 PM UTC

Kye wrote: post #3

They're not really independent as long as they're stuck on Substack's domain. You can export your list and maybe get some % to move to another newsletter host, but any links to past newsletters will forever be on their domain. Substack keeps saying "eventually" on using your own, but with no clear timeline or real justification for not launching with it. Same reason I won't touch Hey.

Substack founder here. You might be surprised at the relative importance of the mailing list. You also have your own Stripe account on Substack.

That said, it’s a fair point, and I understand wanting to wait until we support it.

Re: Ben Smith on the rise of Substack and independent journalists [video]

#24

Post by rchaud » Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 2:33 PM UTC

Kye wrote: post #3

They're not really independent as long as they're stuck on Substack's domain. You can export your list and maybe get some % to move to another newsletter host, but any links to past newsletters will forever be on their domain. Substack keeps saying "eventually" on using your own, but with no clear timeline or real justification for not launching with it. Same reason I won't touch Hey.

It's Medium.com all over again. Sharecropping on someone else's platform. It gets you exposure at first, and some level of trust; back in 2012/13 when Medium was new, the content was pretty high quality. Now, it's a wasteland of "here's my two cents on something that has been covered in far more detail elsewhere" type blogspam.

The same with happen with Substack. They need to grow, just like every other VC-funded startup. An inevitable decline in quality will result.

Re: Ben Smith on the rise of Substack and independent journalists [video]

#25

Post by elicash » Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 2:35 PM UTC

Kye wrote: post #3

They're not really independent as long as they're stuck on Substack's domain. You can export your list and maybe get some % to move to another newsletter host, but any links to past newsletters will forever be on their domain. Substack keeps saying "eventually" on using your own, but with no clear timeline or real justification for not launching with it. Same reason I won't touch Hey.

Self-hosting ghost.org may be a better solution, given their recent email and membership features. Could also use the substation theme: https://substation.rdnthemes.com

Re: Ben Smith on the rise of Substack and independent journalists [video]

#26

Post by edouard-harris » Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 2:53 PM UTC

cjbest wrote: post #23

Kye wrote: post #3

They're not really independent as long as they're stuck on Substack's domain. You can export your list and maybe get some % to move to another newsletter host, but any links to past newsletters will forever be on their domain. Substack keeps saying "eventually" on using your own, but with no clear timeline or real justification for not launching with it. Same reason I won't touch Hey.

Substack founder here. You might be surprised at the relative importance of the mailing list. You also have your own Stripe account on Substack. That said, it’s a fair point, and I understand wanting to wait until we support it.

Interesting. My own speculation had been that giving Substack creators their own domains wouldn't necessarily be in the creators' interest as a group, because of things like e.g. Apple's policy with respect to blocking third-party cookies. Keeping everything on substack.com means there's less friction when a user signs up for their second (or N + 1th) newsletter, which surely implies more revenue for creators in the aggregate.

Re: Ben Smith on the rise of Substack and independent journalists [video]

#27

Post by cjbest » Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 2:57 PM UTC

groby_b wrote: post #9

GreeniFi wrote: post #4

Previous thinking (based on experience) was that people paid for access to a news platform rather than to individual name-brand writers. This was apparently why earlier efforts at micro-payments for articles failed and/or subscriptions failed. Ben Smith seems to think something has changed in the market such that people are now willing to make small payments to individual writers. However Smith does not say what has…

My take is that previous attempts were "how can we get news readers to pay", and current attempts are "what news do people who pay for news want". And in general, if you pay for news, you want opinionated voices you can deeply trust, and whose bias you're familiar with. That's not possible on an aggregated news platform, since that by its nature will try to be all things to a fairly large group of people - you need a…

I think this is right.

> whose bias your are familiar with I This is fair, but there is a positive version which is "whose worldview you understand, and find interesting/valuable"

Every person and organization comes with some kind of bias - even if part of that bias is "try to be clear eyed and tell the truth".

The advantage of subscribing directly to writers is that you get to choose explicitly who you want to trust, and having done so the writers' incentive is to keep that trust.

As a writer, you get to make your own bet about what work is important, you get paid in proportion to the value you create, and only your readers can fire you.

Re: Ben Smith on the rise of Substack and independent journalists [video]

#28

Post by rchaud » Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 3:07 PM UTC

julianapostate wrote: post #15

Barrin92 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing much has been happening with the New York Times lately. Most of the conflict around the New York Times is actually exactly said fringe groups being offended because the NYT pisses them off in one way or the other. Liberals complain about the Cotton piece, someone complains about Scott Alexander being doxxed, and someone on the right probably thinks the NYT has been overrun by communists. Which actually proves…

Liberals complain about the cotton piece and the editor resigns 4 days later. Scott Alexander deletes his blog and NYT has pretended nothing happened.

The editor resigned after tweeting that the article was carefully vetted, then admitting that he hadn't actually read the piece himself.

That is basically dereliction of duty considering that the piece is from a sitting US senator advocating for military intervention against American citizens. Should he have stayed on in that job?

It shouldn't come as a surprise that that topic would cause more public consternation than doxxing the author of a semi-popular blog that the majority of Americans have no stake in.

Re: Ben Smith on the rise of Substack and independent journalists [video]

#29

Post by zby » Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 3:08 PM UTC

GreeniFi wrote: post #4

Previous thinking (based on experience) was that people paid for access to a news platform rather than to individual name-brand writers. This was apparently why earlier efforts at micro-payments for articles failed and/or subscriptions failed. Ben Smith seems to think something has changed in the market such that people are now willing to make small payments to individual writers. However Smith does not say what has…

Ben Thompson has a good article about what is different now: https://stratechery.com/2020/never-ending-niches/

Re: Ben Smith on the rise of Substack and independent journalists [video]

#30

Post by davis » Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 3:30 PM UTC

rchaud wrote: post #24

Kye wrote: post #3

They're not really independent as long as they're stuck on Substack's domain. You can export your list and maybe get some % to move to another newsletter host, but any links to past newsletters will forever be on their domain. Substack keeps saying "eventually" on using your own, but with no clear timeline or real justification for not launching with it. Same reason I won't touch Hey.

It's Medium.com all over again. Sharecropping on someone else's platform. It gets you exposure at first, and some level of trust; back in 2012/13 when Medium was new, the content was pretty high quality. Now, it's a wasteland of "here's my two cents on something that has been covered in far more detail elsewhere" type blogspam. The same with happen with Substack. They need to grow, just like every other VC-funded sta…

It really is the irony of entire Substack platform: the inspiration of it is Stratechery yet one of Ben Thompson's most consistent themes (aggregation theory) makes it clear how precarious of a situation it can be when you rely on another company for your audience reach and when it comes to establishing a brand.

Granted, I do think Substack is more of a platform than an aggregator compared to Facebook. But people that want to hop on Substack just need to know that you are (as of now) going to be sharing your brand with Substack and also that you will be at the whim of their feature development and what their roadmap looks like. They raised their Series A a year ago but their progress with site features has been... well, underwhelming.