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> The same applies to Twitter and Substack, where signing up to just four writers’ output at $5 a month each is already more than the cost of a $17 New York Tim

> The same applies to Twitter and Substack, where signing up to just four writers’ output at $5 a month each is already more than the cost of a $17 New York Times subscription, which gives you a greater breadth of coverage. Imagine I really like hamburgers. I might choose to $5 each week on a burger and be happy with the quality of a burger made by people who only make burgers. The alternative is spending $4 a week so I could access a buffet with lower quality burgers (after all, it’s not their speciality) but also hot dogs, sandwiches, poke bowls and sushi. Trying to convince me that the buffet is a better deal just because I have access to a wider range of foods when all I really want is a burger is not a winning argument for me.

rad_gruchalski 6y ago
You can't survive on a burger a week and you will eat other food too between your $5 burgers. So maybe it's worth spending the $4 / week covering "most of the other food" you gotta eat anyway.
- docdeek 6y ago
  It’s not an exact analogy, that’s for sure. Maybe I could save it by asking where am I likely to get a better quality burger: the place that charges me $5 a week just for burgers, or the one that charges me only $4 a week AND I get a whole lot of other stuff I don’t like but could still consume
- jrumbut 6y ago
  And, to strain the metaphor further, most of the $5 burger makers are just repackaging the $4 burgers since the $4 burger makers are the ones who gather the ingredients.
- nxpnsv 6y ago
  Depends on the size of the burger I guess :D
- HPsquared 6y ago
  Paying for news has become something of a "luxury" product. In these conditions, quality and satisfaction of a niche is more important than quantity (though quantity has a quality of its own)
  - dotancohen 6y ago
    It always has been. Source: I'm over the hill. now get off my lawn.
dgudkov 6y ago
Substack bundling is inevitable as subscription-based blogging matures. It's just a matter of time until we start seeing offers "Subscribe to top authors A, B, and C, for only $X/mo".
- rchaud 6y ago
  Medium.com all over again.
ling3 6y ago
The problem with buying the NYT subscription is that you still get the ads. If not overtly, then they are still buried in the content in some sponsored form or another, because this is a large part of how the newspaper makes money. And the newspaper has other agendas too - political, commercial, etc. The Substack model, on the other hand (at least so far) lets you cut out most of the crap - the signal to noise ratio is just so much higher.
- fakedang 6y ago
  And yet Substack was featured on HN top for running ads in their email newsletters....
- rchaud 6y ago
  Newspapers have some level of editorial oversight, governance and fact-checking. Substack writers don't offer any of that. I understand that that's part of the appeal, but I wouldn't go as far as to say that Substack writers don't have their own agenda or biases.
  - ling3 6y ago
    They definitely do, but I think they are easier to spot. The problem with bigger publications it that they have overarching biases blended throughout, subtle ads and so on, rather than individual authors being overly opinionated. In the substack model, you probably know about the author's biases when you sign up.
- kcartlidge 6y ago
  > The problem with buying the NYT subscription is that you still get the ads It is annoying when a paid subscription doesn't eliminate ads. From their perspective if you bought a physical edition you'd still get the ads so there's no difference. And I guess by showing a willingness to pay and the presence of a disposable income, you may be proving yourself to be of more value to the advertisers - paying makes you more of a target not less (however unfairly).
bollorior 6y ago
Like the music industry a decade or so ago, the news industry is now in a position where, rather than try and compete, they are going to blame their customers and their competitors for their own failings, and try and secure a special status whereby they get paid in perpetuity for doing nothing because of their supposed great importance to society.
- karatinversion 6y ago
  This varies a lot - legacy media, sure. But the New York Times is doing extremely well!
yerwhat01010 6y ago
> Back in 2006, the New York Times charged readers an average of $534 for a subscription, while it brought in a further $1,064 per subscriber from ads. Wait, what? Is this the yearly figure? A subscription to the NYT cost >$500/year? Who the hell pays that much for a newspaper?
- slightwinder 6y ago
  Printing Paper and transporting it every day to you is costly. And back then, content was generally more expensive, because there was no elaborated online-crowd who delivered you half of your content for free. Today you have wikipedia, reddit, google, twitter, e-mail and many more which allow you to research many stuff from home. Back in the days you were forced to go around physically, talk to people face to face, visit libraries, maintain your own library. That was far more expensive than what you can do today. At the same time, because of the high quality free knowledge we have today, you can externalize knowledge and let people research it themself if they wanne know, and get away with lower quality of writing, meaning you can do it faster and need less people to pay. Meaning you can offer a lower price, because it's neccessary to compete in a world of massivly free information.
  - m463 6y ago
    > Printing Paper and transporting it every day to you is costly. The whole "technology tree" for newspapers like the New York Times was actually really fascinating. Paper and Ink by the trainload and delivery trucks making their way across the nation in the wee hours of the night. do papers even have print editions anymore?
    - fakedang 6y ago
      Uh, yes? NYT, LA Times, WSJ are examples of some that have running print editions. Even more common in the old world.
- tschwimmer 6y ago
  It used to be that print newspaper subscriptions were quite expensive. Now that news is so heavily devalued subscriptions are a lot cheaper but even in the early 2000s a premium daily newspaper subscription could easily be $50 a month.
Barrin92 6y ago
It's questionable whether a lot of substack writers give you more quality access than the entire newsroom at the NYT, WSJ, or similar newspapers, where a lot of substack writers still contribute. I think the high fees on substack, like on patreon have another reason. It creates a weird parasocial relationship between the creator and the reader that gives the reader the feeling that they have contributed to a cause, or has some personal relationship with the author they support, and so on. In that way it seems to me more similar to twitch streamers who often extract huge sums of money from their donors, when objectively the viewer gets more content out of a 10$ streaming subscription.
- cosmodisk 6y ago
  It also depends on the subject. For instance, there's an ex journalist in my country pulling in €20K/month on Patreon by making videos on corruption in the country. It resonates well with the audience which doesn't seem to be able to get similar content from the newspapers/TV channels. There are some random writings on Substack,but there are also those that aren't covered much in more popular media, which leaves a gap and some writers are happy to fill it.
- moron4hire 6y ago
  One of the big things that strikes me about these journalists who leave their papers or start a side gig on Substack is the marked decrease in the quality of their writing. The role of the copy-editor is extremely important.
  - ameister14 6y ago
    Which is why it's so frustrating that the NYT laid off most of theirs.
  - rchaud 6y ago
    They're also managing the business side of things directly, which can be very time consuming when you're getting started.
- vergessenmir 6y ago

rad_gruchalski 6y ago

You can't survive on a burger a week and you will eat other food too between your $5 burgers. So maybe it's worth spending the $4 / week covering "most of the other food" you gotta eat anyway.

docdeek 6y ago
It’s not an exact analogy, that’s for sure. Maybe I could save it by asking where am I likely to get a better quality burger: the place that charges me $5 a week just for burgers, or the one that charges me only $4 a week AND I get a whole lot of other stuff I don’t like but could still consume
jrumbut 6y ago
And, to strain the metaphor further, most of the $5 burger makers are just repackaging the $4 burgers since the $4 burger makers are the ones who gather the ingredients.
nxpnsv 6y ago
Depends on the size of the burger I guess :D
HPsquared 6y ago
Paying for news has become something of a "luxury" product. In these conditions, quality and satisfaction of a niche is more important than quantity (though quantity has a quality of its own)
- dotancohen 6y ago
  It always has been. Source: I'm over the hill. now get off my lawn.

dgudkov 6y ago

Substack bundling is inevitable as subscription-based blogging matures. It's just a matter of time until we start seeing offers "Subscribe to top authors A, B, and C, for only $X/mo".

rchaud 6y ago
Medium.com all over again.

ling3 6y ago

The problem with buying the NYT subscription is that you still get the ads. If not overtly, then they are still buried in the content in some sponsored form or another, because this is a large part of how the newspaper makes money. And the newspaper has other agendas too - political, commercial, etc. The Substack model, on the other hand (at least so far) lets you cut out most of the crap - the signal to noise ratio is just so much higher.

fakedang 6y ago
And yet Substack was featured on HN top for running ads in their email newsletters....
rchaud 6y ago
Newspapers have some level of editorial oversight, governance and fact-checking. Substack writers don't offer any of that. I understand that that's part of the appeal, but I wouldn't go as far as to say that Substack writers don't have their own agenda or biases.
- ling3 6y ago
  They definitely do, but I think they are easier to spot. The problem with bigger publications it that they have overarching biases blended throughout, subtle ads and so on, rather than individual authors being overly opinionated. In the substack model, you probably know about the author's biases when you sign up.
kcartlidge 6y ago
> The problem with buying the NYT subscription is that you still get the ads It is annoying when a paid subscription doesn't eliminate ads. From their perspective if you bought a physical edition you'd still get the ads so there's no difference. And I guess by showing a willingness to pay and the presence of a disposable income, you may be proving yourself to be of more value to the advertisers - paying makes you more of a target not less (however unfairly).

bollorior 6y ago

Like the music industry a decade or so ago, the news industry is now in a position where, rather than try and compete, they are going to blame their customers and their competitors for their own failings, and try and secure a special status whereby they get paid in perpetuity for doing nothing because of their supposed great importance to society.

karatinversion 6y ago
This varies a lot - legacy media, sure. But the New York Times is doing extremely well!

yerwhat01010 6y ago

> Back in 2006, the New York Times charged readers an average of $534 for a subscription, while it brought in a further $1,064 per subscriber from ads. Wait, what? Is this the yearly figure? A subscription to the NYT cost >$500/year? Who the hell pays that much for a newspaper?

slightwinder 6y ago
Printing Paper and transporting it every day to you is costly. And back then, content was generally more expensive, because there was no elaborated online-crowd who delivered you half of your content for free. Today you have wikipedia, reddit, google, twitter, e-mail and many more which allow you to research many stuff from home. Back in the days you were forced to go around physically, talk to people face to face, visit libraries, maintain your own library. That was far more expensive than what you can do today. At the same time, because of the high quality free knowledge we have today, you can externalize knowledge and let people research it themself if they wanne know, and get away with lower quality of writing, meaning you can do it faster and need less people to pay. Meaning you can offer a lower price, because it's neccessary to compete in a world of massivly free information.
- m463 6y ago
  > Printing Paper and transporting it every day to you is costly. The whole "technology tree" for newspapers like the New York Times was actually really fascinating. Paper and Ink by the trainload and delivery trucks making their way across the nation in the wee hours of the night. do papers even have print editions anymore?
  - fakedang 6y ago
    Uh, yes? NYT, LA Times, WSJ are examples of some that have running print editions. Even more common in the old world.
tschwimmer 6y ago
It used to be that print newspaper subscriptions were quite expensive. Now that news is so heavily devalued subscriptions are a lot cheaper but even in the early 2000s a premium daily newspaper subscription could easily be $50 a month.

Barrin92 6y ago

It's questionable whether a lot of substack writers give you more quality access than the entire newsroom at the NYT, WSJ, or similar newspapers, where a lot of substack writers still contribute. I think the high fees on substack, like on patreon have another reason. It creates a weird parasocial relationship between the creator and the reader that gives the reader the feeling that they have contributed to a cause, or has some personal relationship with the author they support, and so on. In that way it seems to me more similar to twitch streamers who often extract huge sums of money from their donors, when objectively the viewer gets more content out of a 10$ streaming subscription.

cosmodisk 6y ago
It also depends on the subject. For instance, there's an ex journalist in my country pulling in €20K/month on Patreon by making videos on corruption in the country. It resonates well with the audience which doesn't seem to be able to get similar content from the newspapers/TV channels. There are some random writings on Substack,but there are also those that aren't covered much in more popular media, which leaves a gap and some writers are happy to fill it.
moron4hire 6y ago
One of the big things that strikes me about these journalists who leave their papers or start a side gig on Substack is the marked decrease in the quality of their writing. The role of the copy-editor is extremely important.
- ameister14 6y ago
  Which is why it's so frustrating that the NYT laid off most of theirs.
- rchaud 6y ago
  They're also managing the business side of things directly, which can be very time consuming when you're getting started.
vergessenmir 6y ago