The Substackerati

When I asked about their views on content moderation, the founders said that, because readers opt in to newsletters—unlike Facebook, there’s no algorithm-based feed—they have relatively less responsibility to get involved

In general, will Substack replicate the patterns of marginalization found across the media industry, or will it help people locked out of the dominant media sphere to flourish? To a large extent, the answer depends on whether or not Substack’s founders believe they’re in the publishing business. When we spoke, they were adamant that Substack is a p... See more

None of that is so surprising—it’s hard to earn four-fire-emoji status without having already built up a reputation within established institutions.

But as you peruse the lists, something becomes clear: the most successful people on Substack are those who have already been well-served by existing media power structures.

To the extent that Substack fixes something in the journalism industry, it might be compared to GoFundMe—a survival mechanism whose resources are unevenly, arbitrarily distributed, laying bare systemic problems without directly tackling them.

“The solution to helping support a healthy ecosystem for writers and journalists is not a beautiful CMS or the blockchain or any other gimmicky thing,” he said. “It’s the entire support structure.”

Investigative journalism seems particularly difficult as a solo enterprise on Substack, which doesn’t reward slowly developed, uncertain projects that come out sporadically.

Writing is often considered an individualistic enterprise, but journalism is a collective endeavor. And that is the paradox of Substack: it’s a way out of a newsroom—and the racism or harassment or vulture-venture capitalism one encountered there—but it’s all the way out, on one’s own

When I asked what, exactly, they thought made someone a promising Substack writer, Best turned to McKenzie and asked, in a jokey hush, “Do we keep the Baschez score a secret?” McKenzie laughed. They have a system, created by a former employee named Nathan Baschez, that measures a Twitter user’s engagement level—retweets, likes, replies—among their ... See more