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I figured that the NYT would go for the identity politics angle when building a takedown for one of their budding competitors. What I found most amusing about

I figured that the NYT would go for the identity politics angle when building a takedown for one of their budding competitors. What I found most amusing about that article was the lack of mention of Bari Weiss, the extremely popular Jewish journalist who wrote for the NYT for years before joining Substack and quickly becoming one of their most popular paid newsletters. It seems like a pretty relevant detail in the Substack story, but because it doesn't aid the narrative of the platform being a haven for right-wing white males, NYT naturally left it out. Pretty poor reporting, IMO.

xhkkffbf 4y ago
The article is pretty embarrassing for the NYT and also a good example of why people are abandoning the old media. The top talks and talks about it being dominated by white men. Then further down the article, they list the top sellers: "The most successful is the history professor Heather Cox Richardson, who has more than a million paid and unpaid subscribers. Other notable writers include the knighted novelist Salman Rushdie, the punk poet laureate Patti Smith and the Eisner-winning comic book writer James Tynion IV." How many of this list is white and male?
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  Is it possible your own perspective is biasing your thoughts here? You're comparing two completely different things and expecting consistency.. > The platform portrayed itself as a haven for independent writers with fewer resources while offering six-figure advances to several prominent white men. Is just describing how it was formed and indeed the list of 'recruits' was largely male and white (Greenwald, Yglesias, Singal, Deboer, Sullivan, etc). This is perhaps an unfair framing because there were indeed Women and PoC in their list of Substack Pros as well, but they had smaller audiences and their advances were substantially smaller. > "The most successful is the history professor Heather Cox Richardson, who has more than a million paid and unpaid subscribers. Other notable writers include the knighted novelist Salman Rushdie, the punk poet laureate Patti Smith and the Eisner-winning comic book writer James Tynion IV." Is describing who's popular on it today. Those two paragraphs don't have to be consistent for the story to be accurate..

xhkkffbf 4y ago

The article is pretty embarrassing for the NYT and also a good example of why people are abandoning the old media. The top talks and talks about it being dominated by white men. Then further down the article, they list the top sellers: "The most successful is the history professor Heather Cox Richardson, who has more than a million paid and unpaid subscribers. Other notable writers include the knighted novelist Salman Rushdie, the punk poet laureate Patti Smith and the Eisner-winning comic book writer James Tynion IV." How many of this list is white and male?

mikeyouse 4y ago
Is it possible your own perspective is biasing your thoughts here? You're comparing two completely different things and expecting consistency.. > The platform portrayed itself as a haven for independent writers with fewer resources while offering six-figure advances to several prominent white men. Is just describing how it was formed and indeed the list of 'recruits' was largely male and white (Greenwald, Yglesias, Singal, Deboer, Sullivan, etc). This is perhaps an unfair framing because there were indeed Women and PoC in their list of Substack Pros as well, but they had smaller audiences and their advances were substantially smaller. > "The most successful is the history professor Heather Cox Richardson, who has more than a million paid and unpaid subscribers. Other notable writers include the knighted novelist Salman Rushdie, the punk poet laureate Patti Smith and the Eisner-winning comic book writer James Tynion IV." Is describing who's popular on it today. Those two paragraphs don't have to be consistent for the story to be accurate..