Newsletters could be the next (and only) hope to save the media

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.

In the wake of the Summer of Substack, the novelty of launching a newsletter where readers pay directly for your work has given way to the reality of, well, keeping that newsletter up. And keeping those readers happy. And finding new ones when, inevitably, some of those readers decide they’re kind of over you (nicely termed as “churn”). Inevitably,... 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