11 ms·

Journalists Start Demanding Substack Censor Its Writers

126 points by dnh44 6y ago

tedunangst 6y ago
So will this be Greenwald's last post?
- snicksnak 6y ago
  can't wait for his testimony before congress tomorrow about saving the free and diverse press.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
donovanian 6y ago
When faced with people that demand silence: keep speaking and laugh in their joyless, authoritarian faces.
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  This is an emotional take that's ultimately just as destructive as whatever your perceived enemy is doing.
  - lolwhatno 6y ago
    Lol what? Speaking when someone attempts to censor you is just as destructive as censorship? Holy false equivalence, Batman!
    - happytoexplain 6y ago
      I wasn't addressing the person being censored, nor did I criticize the act of "speaking". It's deeply ironic that you're using the phrase "false equivalence".
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
subjectsigma 6y ago
The two big tells for me are how hard people flip-flopped on Greenwald and how he has to 'defend' himself with his past accomplishments. Leftist Twitter was a huge Greenwald fan when he was breaking the Snowden story. Then when he does something they don't like, suddenly he was just "handed the story" and people are acting like he was always a subpar alt-right grifter who just got to where he is by luck. "Bah, we never liked you anyways!" has the same feel as "We have always been at war with Eurasia!" And yes, in their eyes, it doesn't matter if you're a gay reporter exposing government secrets and vocally supporting progressive candidates, if you wrote one article which could be seen as supporting Trump, you're out of the club, full stop. Years of progressive reporting don't matter once you've got the Black Mark. This was a beautiful takedown, if a little bit overdramatic.
- adamcstephens 6y ago
  > if a little bit overdramatic. This is an apt description for Greenwald. I’ve read his stuff for many years, and is par for the course.
  - mariusor 6y ago
    Isn't that what editorial journalism is about? Injecting some drama and sentiment into otherwise flat events: "mainstream journalists are being hypocritical".
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
snicksnak 6y ago
It is amazing how journalists from mayor outlets and even institutions have so much contempt for independent substack journalists. They think it's beneath them because somehow only working for those outlets gives their reporting legitimacy and a form of entitlement to publish therefor they try to demonize substack and delegitimize its writers because they are independent. I saw it being labeled as "onlyfans for journalists". That's mostly coming from mediocre journalists who probably secretly envy substack writers for their huge profile. Matt Taibbi recently wrote a piece about it that's worth reading https://taibbi.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-substack https://taibbi.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-substack
- hntrader 6y ago
  A lot of journalists have gone down a very tracked and credentialed path, having gone through prestigious institution after prestigious institution to end up in another prestigious institution. To see someone bypass all the gatekeepers and yet become more of a success than them must really grind their gears.
  - NotSammyHagar 6y ago
    I doubt they care. I'd never hard of several of the "special substack successes". Who has time to go out searching the world for journalists who write things they like? I read newspapers in part because I don't want to search the world. I'm aware that no one is perfect. Just like I don't say cultivate the best people on twitter to follow. Who has so much time to waste on that? I'm sorry but all this comes across as people just searching for someone who tells them what they want to hear.
    - hntrader 6y ago
      "I doubt they care" Jealousy and envy is often what's behind bitterness and resentment
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
762236 6y ago
On YouTube I now watch all sorts of self-created producers. I stopped watching Netflix, etc., and just watch the self-made people. Substack is hosting the self-made journalists, and kudos to them (and Glenn).
- WalterSear 6y ago
  I lost interest in TV and movies more than a decade ago But, a few years back I found youtube producers and have been watching them almost every night since. It is odd that individuals and small groups could consistently make more engaging, interesting content than organizations with vastly more money and people.
javajosh 6y ago
Just like making money from software requires every product have an artificial scarcity feature, so too does making money from journalism. It makes sense that journalism-for-profit businesses would want control over not only their own stories and content, but some degree of control over what other's say, as well. It's not clear what leverage they would use, apart from attacking "fair use" doctrine. AFAIK if you learn something from the NY Times, you're allowed to tell others about it, and talk about the event. (right?) But haven't you also economically harmed the NY Times because in your tweet noting some fact you learned from the NYT, say, you've provided most of the value of the NYT (a factual report) to your audience for free? This presents the interesting problem of "copy-writed facts", which would be a terrifying world to live in!
- robgibbons 6y ago
  Facts cannot be copyrighted. Only the literary expressions surrounding them.
stonogo 6y ago
I think this is a fairly predictable spin on what is a far more fundamental issue than "big tech" being some kind of well-organized conspiracy against independent thought. Either you regard journalism as benefiting from collective effort or you don't. Some people don't like working with others, and I think Greenwald has fairly clearly demonstrated that he's not interested in the slightest bit of oversight of his work. I don't personally see a problem with that but the idea that individual contributors can benefit from being part of a larger institution is equally valid. Whether or not a given institution is a net benefit to the output of its workers is of course extremely context-dependent, but in this case I'm old enough to have seen both sides of this story. There was a time when it was common for journalistic institutions (back when they had a profit model) to station reporters all over the globe and coordinate efforts on covering news. Obviously on substack I can follow Greenwald to hear about whatever Greenwald is interested in but it's up to me to find a sufficient diversity of writers to cover all the places and topics that I care about, which was traditionally one of the services that news editors at big news bureaus provided. The drawback to a horde of independent writers self-publishing is that it's easy to get dragged into an echo chamber. I don't think that is the case with Greenwald so I'll invent a reporter: let's borrow the film industry's Alan Smithee. Alan Smithee might spend five years doing excellent reporting and build a substantial following. What happens to that following when Smithee's family is taken hostage by a state actor and he is forced to start producing propaganda for that state? What happens when Smithee is presented with a tremendous amount of money to advocate for a certain cause? This is one of the circuit-breakers that institutional oversight can provide; a collective effort can mitigate the value of coopting a specific contributor. Without that institution, we're all going to have to not only construct our coverage piecemeal from these independent operators, but remain vigilant that the quality and veracity of their work stays consistent, which is even harder to do on one's own. Obviously the same can happen if someone within an institution gains sufficient political capital within that institution, but there are of course ways to structure an institution to prevent that as well. Oversight boards and ombudsmen are some examples of that. I personally suspect Greenwald's distaste for editorial oversight colors every single thing he writes, to the point that I place less weight on his reporting now than I did some years ago. I don't think he's lying or otherwise behaving unethically, but I don't think his personal priorities align with mine the way they did back then. It took me a while to come to this conclusion, though, and even now it feels uncomfortable to "admit" that I don't really value his work as highly any more. So, I'm too involved in the tech industry to be convinced that there's some computer-nerd conspiracy to "control the narrative," but I can clearly see that there are people who prefer to work independently and there are people who value those institutional 'circuit breakers', and I think that's the real root of the debate here.
Barrin92 6y ago
I honestly can't say I have a lot of sympathy either for the mentioned mediocre journalists at mainstream institutions, or for the substack crowd for several reasons. One is that this entire thing, from both sides has devolved into essentially neverending meta-commentary on journalism, rather than well.. actual journalism. I have sympathy for people who go independent because they want more freedom and the bosses at the news outlets were breathing down their necks. But people like Bari Weiss, or even Greenwald nowadays are not better. It's nothing but victimhood and uninteresting internal journalism drama between the renegade journalists and the establishment. At the end it seems like they all just profit from the noise. I have serious issues with the state of mainstream journalism but this antagonistic patronage based system where readers have parasocial attachment to their substack heroes is also terrible. Editors, fact-checking, investigative journalism and so on need resources, at the end of the day most of substack seems to devolve into blogging to a fanbase. There are some nice niches, for example I've been following China scholars on substack who report on the internal politics of China in a way you won't find in general media outlets, but a lot of the most popular people on the site right now seem to try to capitalise on the political environment.
- insickness 6y ago
  There's no way you could classify Greenwald as only having written meta-commentary on journalism unless you've never read anything else by him in his entire storied career.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    there is indeed no way I could classify his whole career like that, which is why is used the qualifier 'nowadays'. I am very aware of the amount of investigative journalism he has done. But the point is, that takes institutional support, it cannot be done with a bunch of fans online. And in recent times he has almost exclusively written about nothing else but the online drama surrounding his persona or other journalists.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
andrewfromx 6y ago
I just recently created my own substack publishing account. I wanted to blog something, former medium user from years ago, and i thought, i heard substack > medium let me try that. And I definitely got that "self publishing" vibe I remember from years ago trying to publish books. I mean don't get me wrong the substack experience was flawless. With just my twitter account I had the same type of thing my hero's blog from! But, at the end of the day I knew this was just like medium but a better deal for the writer. And I knew this was a website, where anyone can sign up. It's so weird that stigma of "being self published" was a real thing in 2005, 2006, 2007... somewhere around 2019 it faded away. Now serious writers are self published too.
Jeff_Brown 6y ago
I think it's right to trust big institutions with storied reputations more. I read indy stuff s lot but more skeptically. (I like to believe I'm skeptical about everything I read, but there is after all only so much time in the day to double-check one's sources.)

126 points by dnh44 6y ago

tedunangst 6y ago

So will this be Greenwald's last post?

snicksnak 6y ago
can't wait for his testimony before congress tomorrow about saving the free and diverse press.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

donovanian 6y ago

When faced with people that demand silence: keep speaking and laugh in their joyless, authoritarian faces.

happytoexplain 6y ago
This is an emotional take that's ultimately just as destructive as whatever your perceived enemy is doing.
- lolwhatno 6y ago
  Lol what? Speaking when someone attempts to censor you is just as destructive as censorship? Holy false equivalence, Batman!
  - happytoexplain 6y ago
    I wasn't addressing the person being censored, nor did I criticize the act of "speaking". It's deeply ironic that you're using the phrase "false equivalence".
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

subjectsigma 6y ago

The two big tells for me are how hard people flip-flopped on Greenwald and how he has to 'defend' himself with his past accomplishments. Leftist Twitter was a huge Greenwald fan when he was breaking the Snowden story. Then when he does something they don't like, suddenly he was just "handed the story" and people are acting like he was always a subpar alt-right grifter who just got to where he is by luck. "Bah, we never liked you anyways!" has the same feel as "We have always been at war with Eurasia!" And yes, in their eyes, it doesn't matter if you're a gay reporter exposing government secrets and vocally supporting progressive candidates, if you wrote one article which could be seen as supporting Trump, you're out of the club, full stop. Years of progressive reporting don't matter once you've got the Black Mark. This was a beautiful takedown, if a little bit overdramatic.

adamcstephens 6y ago
> if a little bit overdramatic. This is an apt description for Greenwald. I’ve read his stuff for many years, and is par for the course.
- mariusor 6y ago
  Isn't that what editorial journalism is about? Injecting some drama and sentiment into otherwise flat events: "mainstream journalists are being hypocritical".
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

snicksnak 6y ago

It is amazing how journalists from mayor outlets and even institutions have so much contempt for independent substack journalists. They think it's beneath them because somehow only working for those outlets gives their reporting legitimacy and a form of entitlement to publish therefor they try to demonize substack and delegitimize its writers because they are independent. I saw it being labeled as "onlyfans for journalists". That's mostly coming from mediocre journalists who probably secretly envy substack writers for their huge profile. Matt Taibbi recently wrote a piece about it that's worth reading https://taibbi.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-substack https://taibbi.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-substack

hntrader 6y ago
A lot of journalists have gone down a very tracked and credentialed path, having gone through prestigious institution after prestigious institution to end up in another prestigious institution. To see someone bypass all the gatekeepers and yet become more of a success than them must really grind their gears.
- NotSammyHagar 6y ago
  I doubt they care. I'd never hard of several of the "special substack successes". Who has time to go out searching the world for journalists who write things they like? I read newspapers in part because I don't want to search the world. I'm aware that no one is perfect. Just like I don't say cultivate the best people on twitter to follow. Who has so much time to waste on that? I'm sorry but all this comes across as people just searching for someone who tells them what they want to hear.
  - hntrader 6y ago
    "I doubt they care" Jealousy and envy is often what's behind bitterness and resentment
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 6y ago

762236 6y ago

On YouTube I now watch all sorts of self-created producers. I stopped watching Netflix, etc., and just watch the self-made people. Substack is hosting the self-made journalists, and kudos to them (and Glenn).

WalterSear 6y ago
I lost interest in TV and movies more than a decade ago But, a few years back I found youtube producers and have been watching them almost every night since. It is odd that individuals and small groups could consistently make more engaging, interesting content than organizations with vastly more money and people.

javajosh 6y ago

Just like making money from software requires every product have an artificial scarcity feature, so too does making money from journalism. It makes sense that journalism-for-profit businesses would want control over not only their own stories and content, but some degree of control over what other's say, as well. It's not clear what leverage they would use, apart from attacking "fair use" doctrine. AFAIK if you learn something from the NY Times, you're allowed to tell others about it, and talk about the event. (right?) But haven't you also economically harmed the NY Times because in your tweet noting some fact you learned from the NYT, say, you've provided most of the value of the NYT (a factual report) to your audience for free? This presents the interesting problem of "copy-writed facts", which would be a terrifying world to live in!

robgibbons 6y ago
Facts cannot be copyrighted. Only the literary expressions surrounding them.

stonogo 6y ago

I think this is a fairly predictable spin on what is a far more fundamental issue than "big tech" being some kind of well-organized conspiracy against independent thought. Either you regard journalism as benefiting from collective effort or you don't. Some people don't like working with others, and I think Greenwald has fairly clearly demonstrated that he's not interested in the slightest bit of oversight of his work. I don't personally see a problem with that but the idea that individual contributors can benefit from being part of a larger institution is equally valid. Whether or not a given institution is a net benefit to the output of its workers is of course extremely context-dependent, but in this case I'm old enough to have seen both sides of this story. There was a time when it was common for journalistic institutions (back when they had a profit model) to station reporters all over the globe and coordinate efforts on covering news. Obviously on substack I can follow Greenwald to hear about whatever Greenwald is interested in but it's up to me to find a sufficient diversity of writers to cover all the places and topics that I care about, which was traditionally one of the services that news editors at big news bureaus provided. The drawback to a horde of independent writers self-publishing is that it's easy to get dragged into an echo chamber. I don't think that is the case with Greenwald so I'll invent a reporter: let's borrow the film industry's Alan Smithee. Alan Smithee might spend five years doing excellent reporting and build a substantial following. What happens to that following when Smithee's family is taken hostage by a state actor and he is forced to start producing propaganda for that state? What happens when Smithee is presented with a tremendous amount of money to advocate for a certain cause? This is one of the circuit-breakers that institutional oversight can provide; a collective effort can mitigate the value of coopting a specific contributor. Without that institution, we're all going to have to not only construct our coverage piecemeal from these independent operators, but remain vigilant that the quality and veracity of their work stays consistent, which is even harder to do on one's own. Obviously the same can happen if someone within an institution gains sufficient political capital within that institution, but there are of course ways to structure an institution to prevent that as well. Oversight boards and ombudsmen are some examples of that. I personally suspect Greenwald's distaste for editorial oversight colors every single thing he writes, to the point that I place less weight on his reporting now than I did some years ago. I don't think he's lying or otherwise behaving unethically, but I don't think his personal priorities align with mine the way they did back then. It took me a while to come to this conclusion, though, and even now it feels uncomfortable to "admit" that I don't really value his work as highly any more. So, I'm too involved in the tech industry to be convinced that there's some computer-nerd conspiracy to "control the narrative," but I can clearly see that there are people who prefer to work independently and there are people who value those institutional 'circuit breakers', and I think that's the real root of the debate here.

Barrin92 6y ago

I honestly can't say I have a lot of sympathy either for the mentioned mediocre journalists at mainstream institutions, or for the substack crowd for several reasons. One is that this entire thing, from both sides has devolved into essentially neverending meta-commentary on journalism, rather than well.. actual journalism. I have sympathy for people who go independent because they want more freedom and the bosses at the news outlets were breathing down their necks. But people like Bari Weiss, or even Greenwald nowadays are not better. It's nothing but victimhood and uninteresting internal journalism drama between the renegade journalists and the establishment. At the end it seems like they all just profit from the noise. I have serious issues with the state of mainstream journalism but this antagonistic patronage based system where readers have parasocial attachment to their substack heroes is also terrible. Editors, fact-checking, investigative journalism and so on need resources, at the end of the day most of substack seems to devolve into blogging to a fanbase. There are some nice niches, for example I've been following China scholars on substack who report on the internal politics of China in a way you won't find in general media outlets, but a lot of the most popular people on the site right now seem to try to capitalise on the political environment.

insickness 6y ago
There's no way you could classify Greenwald as only having written meta-commentary on journalism unless you've never read anything else by him in his entire storied career.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  there is indeed no way I could classify his whole career like that, which is why is used the qualifier 'nowadays'. I am very aware of the amount of investigative journalism he has done. But the point is, that takes institutional support, it cannot be done with a bunch of fans online. And in recent times he has almost exclusively written about nothing else but the online drama surrounding his persona or other journalists.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

andrewfromx 6y ago

I just recently created my own substack publishing account. I wanted to blog something, former medium user from years ago, and i thought, i heard substack > medium let me try that. And I definitely got that "self publishing" vibe I remember from years ago trying to publish books. I mean don't get me wrong the substack experience was flawless. With just my twitter account I had the same type of thing my hero's blog from! But, at the end of the day I knew this was just like medium but a better deal for the writer. And I knew this was a website, where anyone can sign up. It's so weird that stigma of "being self published" was a real thing in 2005, 2006, 2007... somewhere around 2019 it faded away. Now serious writers are self published too.

Jeff_Brown 6y ago

I think it's right to trust big institutions with storied reputations more. I read indy stuff s lot but more skeptically. (I like to believe I'm skeptical about everything I read, but there is after all only so much time in the day to double-check one's sources.)