Tendenci@s | Ismael Nafría | Substack

Newsletters go back at least as far as the Middle Ages, but these days, with full-time jobs at stable media companies evaporating—between the 2008 recession and 2019, newsroom employment dropped by 23 percent—Substack offers an appealing alternative.

- Nano- and anti-influencers

Newsletters are booming right now: since the pandemic started, the number of readers and ‘active writers’ on Substack have both doubled, and other providers such as Mailchimp have seen similar spikes in users. Newsletter platforms are attracting big names: Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, New York Magazine columnist Andrew Sullivan and Buzzfeed’s Anne ... See more

The rise of newsletters is a tiny part of a more considerable shift around discovering, filtering, and consuming content online. On a more macro level:-Content supply is getting unbundled with the meteoric rise of individual creators.Trust in institutions is dwindling. [Pew Research]-We're consuming knowledge in more formats than ever before: Tweet... See more

And this got me thinking! Are newsletters ultimately just an entry point to one or more major business industries? NAAS (Newsletters-as-a-service) may eventually become DNCB (Digital Native Community Brands).

Substack sits on top of a trend that’s very dear to me: the democratization of monetized information. In simple terms, writers can earn money by sharing valuable information without the dependency on a publisher or newspaper. That’s not just better for creators but also for consumers because they can have a direct relationship with each other.