Member Brief: Substack and Local News

Substack has the potential to serve as the tool that captures and monetizes professional journalism in ways that were unforeseen before the advent of publications like Stratechery. But if Substack chooses to become more than a Shopify-like solution for the re-platforming of local news, they may find that the real long-term value of their platform l... See more

Armed with a $15.3 million Series A financing by Andreessen Horowitz and plenty of pre-financing traction, Substack has the potential to leverage one of two opportunities. The likely path forward is an organic approach to local media entreprenuers scaling their own region-based media operations, likely competing with other entrepreneur-journalists ... See more

While newspaper executives would argue that, in 2019, it more difficult to persuade consumers to pay for journalism, a private 2PM poll identified that the average earner between $90,000 and $250,000 pays for 17.2 monthly subscriptions across media, entertainment, and utility. Of that 17.2 monthly recurring fees, an average of 5.7 were devoted to w... See more

I think the New York Times is its own thing, it’s going to keep being successful, but there’s a huge swath of the rest of the publishing industry that is being disrupted and will continue to be disrupted. If you look at publishers that exist in the world, because the Internet lets you reach everything, there’s probably space for the very best publi... See more