Posted on 11/10/2021 6:22:20 PM PST by DoodleBob
Substack’s mission statement depicts a journalistic dystopia that wouldn’t look out of place in a book by the platform’s latest recruit, Chuck Palahniuk.
“The great journalistic totems of the last century are dying. News organisations – and other entities that masquerade as them – are turning to increasingly desperate measures for survival. And so we have content farms, clickbait, listicles, inane but viral debates over optical illusions, and a ‘fake news’ epidemic.”
That was 2017 and the trends identified in that post are well embedded in modern culture, but Substack’s subsequent popularity has made clear that there is at least strong appetite for any antidote.
The San Francisco-based company has more than 500,000 paying subscribers to its newsletters, published by an array of writers from whistleblower Edward Snowden to rock musician Jeff Tweedy and salad aficionado Emily Nunn. Also, there is no pressure to grab the attention of Google or Facebook algorithms or get big reader numbers, a feature of modern journalism that has helped strain the bond of trust between the public and the press.
Substack was launched by Chris Best, who had previously launched Kik, a messaging app that he described as “kind of like WhatsApp”, Best’s former Kik colleague Jairaj Sethi and journalist Hamish McKenzie. One of the platform’s backers is venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, whose previous investments include Facebook, Twitter and Airbnb.
Best, Substack’s chief executive, said the aim of the site was to “allow writers and creators to run their own media empire”. Certainly Substack’s most popular writers make vast sums from the platform, with its top 10 publishers bringing in $7m (£5.1m) per year between them.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Subdudes are right up there.
I just subscribed for the year mainly so I can read Alex Berenstein’s reports.
She’s crazy.
Ludicrous to ban her.
Is she on sub stack?
I can imagine later they do the same crap - pull the rug out from successful but verboten sub stacks.
That alone would be worth it
Glenn Greenwald is there. He’s an old-school Liberal journalist who seems to genuinely be interested in reporting the truth. Strange in this day and age, for sure.
https://greenwald.substack.com/
Ping
Locals.com
I pay five bucks a month to subscribe to Greenwald. He’s an honest journalist.
bookmark
Ping for later.
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