I think Substack is onto something and enjoy it both as a subscriber and a contributor. For one thing newspapers and their ilk want to drive my attention. I don

I think Substack is onto something and enjoy it both as a subscriber and a contributor. For one thing newspapers and their ilk want to drive my attention. I don't want that. With Substack I can pick the topics and writers I'm interested in and then easily see and read new articles. And while there are all kinds of writers on Substack I am on the business/technology/investment side so my "DIY magazine" is really a collection of analysis and commentary. You might call this a niche but some might be pretty large and a collection of them might be very big indeed. Also consider Bloomberg author Matt Levine. Fortunately we can read him for free (in exchange for a couple of non-intrusive embedded ads) but if Bloomberg put his material behind their paywall I would not pay $300-400 per year to them in order to read it. I'd certainly be willing to pay $5/month for him though. The other super annoying thing about these aggregators is that they push advertising to you even after you are a paying subscriber! Paying for content that also sends me advertising is a non-starter for me.