8 votes

Substack is selling soap operas

7 comments

  1. [6]
    NaraVara
    Link
    Interesting article that goes over not only the niche Substack is carving out for itself, as a venue to gin up drama by and for the extremely online, but also a general cultural shift in the...

    Interesting article that goes over not only the niche Substack is carving out for itself, as a venue to gin up drama by and for the extremely online, but also a general cultural shift in the economy of public intellectualism. Which is, increasingly, driven by people who are too online for their own good. Basically she's arguing that a lot of our writing now is just an insular clique of intellectuals having personality conflicts with each other rather than a meaningful discourse on ideas. And the driving force in their follower counts really do seem to be like pro-wrestling throwdowns.

    14 votes
    1. [5]
      stu2b50
      Link Parent
      I think that has existed already, and that this shift happened far before now. For one, this is exactly the stuff that is already exhibited by columnists at major publications; they just endlessly...

      I think that has existed already, and that this shift happened far before now. For one, this is exactly the stuff that is already exhibited by columnists at major publications; they just endlessly bicker over each other for seemingly no reason on Twitter. Just now there apparently a controversy over a Elizabeth Bruenig column on Mother's Day, that involved mostly other NYT columnists.

      The genie out of the bottle that substack revealed is that, what a surprise, famous internet writers, like famous actors, famous musicians, famous book writers, and other famous creators, can become independent and reap huge financial boons from their audiences.

      But, to be honest, I don't think this is going to have much of an effect on publications as a whole (although the industry is in continual decline regardless). For one, there's a glut of great journalists who are unemployed or underemployed - this is not an industry with shortage of applicants. Secondly, it's mostly columnist-like activity.

      The FOIA requests, the deep journalism - that wasn't really being done by the people who moved to substack to begin with. Nor is that really something that needs these kind of larger-than-life personalities - I can't really name any particular NYT investigative journalists, despite reading the paper quite often. With breaking news, it's the news that is the attraction, not the person who writes it. So I find it unlikely that that is being negatively affected by substack.

      5 votes
      1. [4]
        NaraVara
        Link Parent
        The thing is, a lot of publications used opinion writers as a cash cow to drive subscriptions. The dry journalism is vegetables and the opinion pages are junk food. It's hard to entice people to...

        The FOIA requests, the deep journalism - that wasn't really being done by the people who moved to substack to begin with.

        The thing is, a lot of publications used opinion writers as a cash cow to drive subscriptions. The dry journalism is vegetables and the opinion pages are junk food. It's hard to entice people to pay for vegetables, but once you disaggregate one from the other there is a real risk of ALL the landscape being taken over by junk food. With news it's especially rough because there's no actual standards around factual reporting, even the old gatekeepers kind of gave up on doing it.

        4 votes
        1. [3]
          stu2b50
          Link Parent
          Perhaps, but in that case the publication's business model only works by dramatically underpaying their biggest talents - clearly that isn't a steady state, and while substack happened to be the...

          Perhaps, but in that case the publication's business model only works by dramatically underpaying their biggest talents - clearly that isn't a steady state, and while substack happened to be the company that illuminated their true worth, it seemed pretty inevitable as this happens in other creative industries.

          The genie is out of the bottle. Substack isn't important now - the tech is relatively simple, and many other companies (or the writers themselves) can package together MailChimp, Wordpress and Stripe to offer a similar service. No amount of complaining will cause Yglesias to forget that over 7,000 people are willing to pay him almost $10/month to read his writing. If you want him writing columns on your site, you'll need to pony up ~$500k - evidently he can bring in that kind of value to his subscribers somehow or another.

          I am somewhat worried about the future of journalism, but in that context, forget about substack - there needs to be an entire overhaul of how publications are run to be at least break even in a steady state.

          3 votes
          1. [2]
            NaraVara
            Link Parent
            I think you're getting too hung up on the Substack thing specifically rather than the general point about the economics of media and journalism. I read the author's point as less about substack...

            I think you're getting too hung up on the Substack thing specifically rather than the general point about the economics of media and journalism.

            I read the author's point as less about substack itself and more about an awareness that most of what passes for intellectual discourse on these platforms is just dressing up petty interpersonal drama and not worth getting worked up over.

            3 votes
            1. stu2b50
              Link Parent
              I'm getting hung up on it because it's my main point. For the most part I agree that the endlessly Twitter bickering between columnist, substackers, and other personalities is somewhat...

              I'm getting hung up on it because it's my main point. For the most part I agree that the endlessly Twitter bickering between columnist, substackers, and other personalities is somewhat manufactured and not terribly productive, and personally very tiring. So I don't have much to say on that part.

              The part that I don't agree with is the obsession over "substack is doing this" and "substack is doing that", hence it's the part that I'm discussing on this internet board. It's behavior you see from columnist in general.

              3 votes
  2. skybrian
    Link
    Fredrik deBoer does this deliberately and has explained exactly how it works. I’m not sure Substack should be blamed for it though? There is something structural to it since it’s simply the nature...

    Fredrik deBoer does this deliberately and has explained exactly how it works. I’m not sure Substack should be blamed for it though? There is something structural to it since it’s simply the nature of blogging (and Twitter) that readers learn authors’ names, since the that’s usually the name of the publication. Making people into celebrities means you do get some celebrity gossip.

    All book publishers and most newspapers promote at least some of their authors. (I think the Economist is the major exception here.)

    Media controversies date back at least to the beginning of American publishing. I’m thinking of the time when Benjamin Franklin drummed up business for Poor Richard’s Almanack by predicting the death of a competing publisher. (Apparently this was also making fun of the competing almanac for publishing astrology.)

    Also, Mark Twain got into a bit of trouble by writing a fake story of a massacre:

    Not surprisingly, the shocking story went viral. Other newspapers picked it up and reprinted the hoax massacre as fact. Lost amid all the blood-soaked prose, however, was the actual intention Twain had for fabricating the story, which he regrettably buried at the end of his article.

    The details are a bit convoluted, but basically Twain meant for his gory story to be a satire of a real-life stock-cooking scheme happening at the time involving San Francisco newspapers and utilities companies. In Twain’s over-the-top spoof, peppered with intentionally glaring errors, the securities scheme was what triggered Hopkins (who was actually unmarried and still very much alive) to go on his murderous rampage. But the satirical attack on unethical stock manipulators was lost on most of Twain’s readers, who were fixated on the horrific details of the non-existent slaughter of Hopkins’ made-up family.

    It seems belittling to treat this as just a soap opera. There is definitely hype and showbiz involved, but writers who are any good also have things they want to say, and that’s part of their appeal too.

    (Incidentally, the Atlantic article is itself an example of publishing some media gossip, which is fun for those of us who weren’t following it. These high-minded articles are a way for more prestigious publications to participate.)

    4 votes