Last week the online media industry went through one of its recurring rituals of self-flagellation. HuffPost, formerly known as The Huffington Post (before the association with Arianna Huffington’s various lifestyle branding initiatives maybe became a bit too cringeworthy) saw its journo-workforce dramatically slashed by new parent company
Well, I am paying more to Substack just in this year than I ever paid for print subscriptions plus legacy media online subs over my entire lifetime. There is just so much good writing on Substack, I gratefully fork over the hundreds of bucks for the privilege of reading.
When Gawker and then Deadspin went under, I was honestly confused by the public hand-wringing and self-pity of writers like Hamilton Nolan.
To an outside observer, it seemed SO OBVIOUS that if the value of those sites was truly based, 100%, in the work and reputations of the writers... and if those writers were all friends (and had enough professional solidarity to quit en masse the instant that they had an annoying boss)... then they could easily have started a new site, which they would have controlled. They could have established it as a worker-owned co-op, with annual managerial elections.
In the case of Deadspin, I’m 90% sure that this new site would have snapped up many of the readers that the old site had lost. (Amazingly, given that the whole world cares about nothing but sports, there are still very few smart and funny sports blogs.)
I’m not just casually throwing out an unrealistic suggestion. I worked for companies for 14 years that earned as much as a million dollars per year from my labor (I’ve done the math) while paying me $60K-$80K. Eventually, just because I was sick of being exploited that way (and of being “fireable”), I started my own tiny company with a couple of similarly disgruntled friends, and within a year we were each earning more than we had when we were employees, we were treating our customers better than our former employer had treated them, and we were setting our own hours and schedules. It was scary to leave employment for self-employment, and not everyone can do it, but the writers who quit Deadspin en masse because they didn’t want to take bad editorial direction could have made it work.
A big part of the “backlash” against writers like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi (and definitely podcasters like “alt-right fanatic” Joe Rogan) is just jealousy... but why be jealous? Leave your exploitative employer, who brings no value to your published work, and start a Substack, Squarespace site, or podcast. Even if it barely limps along, you can get paid more than an Eater.com editor makes. If you lack the name recognition to make a splash, team up with others. Get a part-time job to keep the electricity on while you build a following.
Among the Patreon and Substack accounts I follow, some are pretty obscure (e.g., Michael and Us), but they still bring in enough each month to pay the bills for three or four people.
A last sidenote: it’s kind of amazing how J-school professors are morphing from mere parasites—draining wealth and energy from young adults while selling them the false hope of a stable middle-class existence in a profession that barely exists—to locusts, agitating for censorship and demonizing independent journalists on behalf of the New York Times and CNN.
“J-school professor/administrator” has to be down there with “executioner,” “lambskin condom manufacturer,” and “payday lender” in any list of the world’s slimiest professions.
Journalists don't hate Substack. Journalists use substack. They have to, because the rest of the industry that used to be journalism is now a fascist propaganda mill that no sensible person takes seriously, and therefore is a dying business outside of direct corporate/government support. They couldn't survive otherwise. Substack journalists actually earn their own living.
The feeble minded hacks at sick jokes like NYT or HuffingPoo actually think Substack is stealing their natural market when, in fact, Substack is serving the market they all but told to screw off forever.
There is a lot of great content on Substack. Unfortunately, the "pay $5 per author" model is a little broken. There are all kinds of people on Substack whose work I love to read but I can't really justify shelling out the full cost of my internet connection itself just to subscribe to multiple authors every month. I paid $5 to "subscribe" to this author in order to post this comment because it matters to me. With Apple Music, Netflix, Amazon, etc etc... just using the internet costs probably $400 a month. And what do you get for all those fees/costs/subscriptions? Insulted by leftist media. Talked down to by pundits. Othered and shamed by sociopathic SJWs, doxxed, fired, lied to, manipulated, cheated, and on and on. It's hard to find hardly any content that isn't just flat out satanic in its morality or just pure trash.
Substack is a bright candle flame in a dark room. I just hope they change this subscription model. I would pay $20 a month to read everyone but I can't pay $5 a month to 20 writers. It would be the most expensive magazine subscription of all time. I used to subscribe to Harpers, the New Yorker, the Atlantic and maybe a couple of other magazines on and off before the whole wokeness struggle sessions began over the last few years. Those subscriptions were like $10 a year with various promos usually and the writing was world-class awesome before the Brave New World/1984/Animal Farm people showed up and ruined intellectual life. I don't subscribe to any publications now. And, sorry to say, as soon as I post this comment I have to cancel this subscription. But it was worth $5 to shout into the void here.
The internet is beyond broken. It should be shut down. Turned off. Whatever. It's worse than Nuclear Weapons. It should be more controlled and constrained than Nuclear Weapons. It is ruining life for human beings all over the planet. The mere fact that there are thousands and thousands of Buzzfeed/HuffPo writers and websites shows that the intellectual bar is set waaaaay too low. I actually agree with the Chinese Communists/CCP that you should have to get a license from the government to blog or write publicly.
Sent here by Glenn Greenwald today. I have often wondered whether any of the people at Sport Illustrated who were laid off six months after featuring overweight women in their swimsuit issue reconsidered whether that was such a brilliant idea.
I recently canceled my NYT and WP subscriptions. I kept the WSJ (for now) and am also here instead. It got to a point where I believed nothing from the NYT or the WP unless I had read the source document for myself (or heard the audio, or seen the full unclipped footage, etc.), so one day it dawned on me ... wait, what am I paying these papers for, if I have to do my own sleuthing?
I first heard you on Crenshaw's podcast a while back and it struck me how you politely but firmly pushed back on all narratives you felt were BS, whether they be "left" narratives or "right" assertions made by Crenshaw himself. I thought: this guy doesn't care about telling people what they want to hear. Which is precisely what a democracy needs from journalists! I much prefer that you anger me with the truth than appease me with lies.
The bottom line is that people do not like being lied to, and the corporate media whores have long departed from true journalism. The establishment media has enjoyed lying as a business model for decades. Today, that product line still does quite well. And it receives large funding from the elite. HOWEVER, the total addressable market of people hungry for quality news and analysis is large and growing. It is eating away at the market size for lying-based media. Eventually, the "alternative" media will outgrow the fake news establishment media. It will first have to suffer monopoly-style attacks from the folks that earn a living out of lying and fallacies.
Corporate media has lost its way. Funding a competent and relatively courageous (as it is currently measured) alternative seems to be the only sensible thing to do.
The fight over 1st amendment / freedom of expression is well under way. I'd say oligopolists lead at the clubhouse turn but the masses are starting to wake up. I haven't used google as my primary search engine in years. I still use FB occasionally to stay in touch with friends/family but the app is no longer on my phone. Decentralized media / money / government is the way to go.
"But who knows" is right. There will be attempts to take out Substack. And if Substack falls, then theoretically the next free speech initative will learn from the failure, and build an even more robust platform.
If we're lucky, there will be more pressing problems for the establishment journos to worry about. And there will be no interruption in the services of Greenwald and Tracey.
At any rate, I really enjoyed reading this, and can imagine the entire article superimposed on a large background picture of a middle finger towards the censorship proponents.
And I can visualize TYT in their private moments, realizing that at least two of the people they laid off, one of whom they subsequently hurled personal childish insults at, will make more of a difference in this world than they can ever hope to.
Without knowing yet what your productivity will be here on substack, I will be a pilot subscriber to help motivate you. You thoughts here were cogent and well delivered and I particulalry enjoyed what you chose to hyperlink to to illustrate certain points (i.e. what is "pure crap".) Please keep up the good work.
Mainstream journalism will have a chance when they stop listening to whomever gives the national or international talking points. "Russia Collusion!" and "Burning down the Amazon!"; and now it's "Asian discrimination!". I don't know who controls The Narrative, but insofar as Substack is a place where you don't have to follow it lemming-like, it will survive.
Conformity seems to be the end goal for everyone that is involved in journalism , and how will they force you to conform to their set of ideas when they don't control your income . This seems to sum up the hate for substack.
On a separate note I never read Michael Tracey before , I just followed him on Twitter and I even disagreed with a lot of what he had to especially especially when he was downplaying the insurrection , but I didn't hesitate to sign up for his substack on the first day he announced it because I wasn't to support independent journalism. good luck with your new endeavor.
Well, I am paying more to Substack just in this year than I ever paid for print subscriptions plus legacy media online subs over my entire lifetime. There is just so much good writing on Substack, I gratefully fork over the hundreds of bucks for the privilege of reading.
When Gawker and then Deadspin went under, I was honestly confused by the public hand-wringing and self-pity of writers like Hamilton Nolan.
To an outside observer, it seemed SO OBVIOUS that if the value of those sites was truly based, 100%, in the work and reputations of the writers... and if those writers were all friends (and had enough professional solidarity to quit en masse the instant that they had an annoying boss)... then they could easily have started a new site, which they would have controlled. They could have established it as a worker-owned co-op, with annual managerial elections.
In the case of Deadspin, I’m 90% sure that this new site would have snapped up many of the readers that the old site had lost. (Amazingly, given that the whole world cares about nothing but sports, there are still very few smart and funny sports blogs.)
I’m not just casually throwing out an unrealistic suggestion. I worked for companies for 14 years that earned as much as a million dollars per year from my labor (I’ve done the math) while paying me $60K-$80K. Eventually, just because I was sick of being exploited that way (and of being “fireable”), I started my own tiny company with a couple of similarly disgruntled friends, and within a year we were each earning more than we had when we were employees, we were treating our customers better than our former employer had treated them, and we were setting our own hours and schedules. It was scary to leave employment for self-employment, and not everyone can do it, but the writers who quit Deadspin en masse because they didn’t want to take bad editorial direction could have made it work.
A big part of the “backlash” against writers like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi (and definitely podcasters like “alt-right fanatic” Joe Rogan) is just jealousy... but why be jealous? Leave your exploitative employer, who brings no value to your published work, and start a Substack, Squarespace site, or podcast. Even if it barely limps along, you can get paid more than an Eater.com editor makes. If you lack the name recognition to make a splash, team up with others. Get a part-time job to keep the electricity on while you build a following.
Among the Patreon and Substack accounts I follow, some are pretty obscure (e.g., Michael and Us), but they still bring in enough each month to pay the bills for three or four people.
A last sidenote: it’s kind of amazing how J-school professors are morphing from mere parasites—draining wealth and energy from young adults while selling them the false hope of a stable middle-class existence in a profession that barely exists—to locusts, agitating for censorship and demonizing independent journalists on behalf of the New York Times and CNN.
“J-school professor/administrator” has to be down there with “executioner,” “lambskin condom manufacturer,” and “payday lender” in any list of the world’s slimiest professions.
Journalists don't hate Substack. Journalists use substack. They have to, because the rest of the industry that used to be journalism is now a fascist propaganda mill that no sensible person takes seriously, and therefore is a dying business outside of direct corporate/government support. They couldn't survive otherwise. Substack journalists actually earn their own living.
The feeble minded hacks at sick jokes like NYT or HuffingPoo actually think Substack is stealing their natural market when, in fact, Substack is serving the market they all but told to screw off forever.
Glenn sent me here. He said to stay true to your principals and print the truth. :)
There is a lot of great content on Substack. Unfortunately, the "pay $5 per author" model is a little broken. There are all kinds of people on Substack whose work I love to read but I can't really justify shelling out the full cost of my internet connection itself just to subscribe to multiple authors every month. I paid $5 to "subscribe" to this author in order to post this comment because it matters to me. With Apple Music, Netflix, Amazon, etc etc... just using the internet costs probably $400 a month. And what do you get for all those fees/costs/subscriptions? Insulted by leftist media. Talked down to by pundits. Othered and shamed by sociopathic SJWs, doxxed, fired, lied to, manipulated, cheated, and on and on. It's hard to find hardly any content that isn't just flat out satanic in its morality or just pure trash.
Substack is a bright candle flame in a dark room. I just hope they change this subscription model. I would pay $20 a month to read everyone but I can't pay $5 a month to 20 writers. It would be the most expensive magazine subscription of all time. I used to subscribe to Harpers, the New Yorker, the Atlantic and maybe a couple of other magazines on and off before the whole wokeness struggle sessions began over the last few years. Those subscriptions were like $10 a year with various promos usually and the writing was world-class awesome before the Brave New World/1984/Animal Farm people showed up and ruined intellectual life. I don't subscribe to any publications now. And, sorry to say, as soon as I post this comment I have to cancel this subscription. But it was worth $5 to shout into the void here.
The internet is beyond broken. It should be shut down. Turned off. Whatever. It's worse than Nuclear Weapons. It should be more controlled and constrained than Nuclear Weapons. It is ruining life for human beings all over the planet. The mere fact that there are thousands and thousands of Buzzfeed/HuffPo writers and websites shows that the intellectual bar is set waaaaay too low. I actually agree with the Chinese Communists/CCP that you should have to get a license from the government to blog or write publicly.
Sent here by Glenn Greenwald today. I have often wondered whether any of the people at Sport Illustrated who were laid off six months after featuring overweight women in their swimsuit issue reconsidered whether that was such a brilliant idea.
Probably not.
I recently canceled my NYT and WP subscriptions. I kept the WSJ (for now) and am also here instead. It got to a point where I believed nothing from the NYT or the WP unless I had read the source document for myself (or heard the audio, or seen the full unclipped footage, etc.), so one day it dawned on me ... wait, what am I paying these papers for, if I have to do my own sleuthing?
I first heard you on Crenshaw's podcast a while back and it struck me how you politely but firmly pushed back on all narratives you felt were BS, whether they be "left" narratives or "right" assertions made by Crenshaw himself. I thought: this guy doesn't care about telling people what they want to hear. Which is precisely what a democracy needs from journalists! I much prefer that you anger me with the truth than appease me with lies.
The bottom line is that people do not like being lied to, and the corporate media whores have long departed from true journalism. The establishment media has enjoyed lying as a business model for decades. Today, that product line still does quite well. And it receives large funding from the elite. HOWEVER, the total addressable market of people hungry for quality news and analysis is large and growing. It is eating away at the market size for lying-based media. Eventually, the "alternative" media will outgrow the fake news establishment media. It will first have to suffer monopoly-style attacks from the folks that earn a living out of lying and fallacies.
Corporate media has lost its way. Funding a competent and relatively courageous (as it is currently measured) alternative seems to be the only sensible thing to do.
The fight over 1st amendment / freedom of expression is well under way. I'd say oligopolists lead at the clubhouse turn but the masses are starting to wake up. I haven't used google as my primary search engine in years. I still use FB occasionally to stay in touch with friends/family but the app is no longer on my phone. Decentralized media / money / government is the way to go.
"But who knows" is right. There will be attempts to take out Substack. And if Substack falls, then theoretically the next free speech initative will learn from the failure, and build an even more robust platform.
If we're lucky, there will be more pressing problems for the establishment journos to worry about. And there will be no interruption in the services of Greenwald and Tracey.
At any rate, I really enjoyed reading this, and can imagine the entire article superimposed on a large background picture of a middle finger towards the censorship proponents.
And I can visualize TYT in their private moments, realizing that at least two of the people they laid off, one of whom they subsequently hurled personal childish insults at, will make more of a difference in this world than they can ever hope to.
Without knowing yet what your productivity will be here on substack, I will be a pilot subscriber to help motivate you. You thoughts here were cogent and well delivered and I particulalry enjoyed what you chose to hyperlink to to illustrate certain points (i.e. what is "pure crap".) Please keep up the good work.
Mainstream journalism will have a chance when they stop listening to whomever gives the national or international talking points. "Russia Collusion!" and "Burning down the Amazon!"; and now it's "Asian discrimination!". I don't know who controls The Narrative, but insofar as Substack is a place where you don't have to follow it lemming-like, it will survive.
Subscribed.
Keep driving them crazy, Michael.
These journos left the Zoom call in a huff when news of layoffs came down.
Conformity seems to be the end goal for everyone that is involved in journalism , and how will they force you to conform to their set of ideas when they don't control your income . This seems to sum up the hate for substack.
On a separate note I never read Michael Tracey before , I just followed him on Twitter and I even disagreed with a lot of what he had to especially especially when he was downplaying the insurrection , but I didn't hesitate to sign up for his substack on the first day he announced it because I wasn't to support independent journalism. good luck with your new endeavor.