6 ms·
I'm kinda surprised that a 13 employee layoff at a 90 employee company is newsworthy enough for the NYTimes.
by jonny_eh 4y ago
I'm kinda surprised that a 13 employee layoff at a 90 employee company is newsworthy enough for the NYTimes.
- de_keyboard 4y agoDirect competition for labour. If writers can earn more on Substack then NYT input costs rise.
- Negitivefrags 4y agoJournalists at the NYT are probably feeling some schadenfreude about it because substack is often positioned as a kind of anti-mainstream-media website.
- jsemrau 4y agoThank you for pointing that out. The US economy is still excepted to grow at 2.5% in 2022. So I am not understand the narrative here. While everyone who is relying on cheap funding to grow their business will be suffering, companies that have solid unit economics should thrive. [1]https://www.oecd.org/economy/united-states-economic-snapshot/ https://www.oecd.org/economy/united-states-economic-snapshot...
- deeptote 4y agoThe narrative is the elite are angry that it now actually costs something to borrow money.
- pessimizer 4y agoThe NYT editorial line despises Substack and prays for it to fail. It's certainly important news for people who are interested in Substack that they're failing to make money, though.
- ab_testing 4y agoWhy do they despise substack? Did Substack do something to piss them off ?
- droptablemain 4y agoSubstack is an existential threat to the NYTimes business model and ultimate existence.
- ibeckermayer 4y agoThe internal woke mob at the NYT bullied Bari Weiss out of the organization, now she’s making way more money writing over at Substack. Glenn Greenwald was also strong armed out of the media company he founded, retreated to Substack, and is prospering. Beyond being a direct competitor to aspects of the NYT’s business, their platform and pro-free-speech ethos are an existential threat to the corporate media (like NYT) monopoly on the Overton window.
- overaton 4y ago
- wbsss4412 4y agoClaiming Weiss left because she was bullied out of the organization papers over leaves out the fact that there was obviously a significant pull factor to get her to jump ship, as you point out, leaving led her to make significantly more money. But yes, there’s clearly a resentment from within elite media (WaPo/NYTimes) that people they don’t like have an avenue for editorial independence that is beyond their reach.
- brandur 4y agoIt may be true that there was a pull factor, but your comment appears to be trying to let the NYT staff off the hook for what would be considered abusive behavior in any other circumstance. Reference, straight from the horse's mouth: https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter Quote: > My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m “writing about the Jews again.” Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are. This is one person's statement, but it's consistent with the way many people have written about the NYT's internal culture and internal cultural shift over the last 5-10 years.
- rchaud 4y agoGot any proof you're willing to share?
- pessimizer 4y agohttps://duckduckgo.com/?q=nyt+editorial+substack https://duckduckgo.com/?q=nyt+editorial+substack
- rchaud 4y agoPlease link the article in question, instead of a search results page.
- pessimizer 4y agoMy evidence is NYT editorials on substack. This search result brings up at least two for you to start with.
- rchaud 4y agoSurely you could have found something to quote? I just read the first link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/11/business/media/substack-newsletter-competition.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/11/business/media/substack-n... Here's a quote: > The story of Substack, the company, is interesting and, of course, meaningful to its investors. But the shift in power toward individual writers and direct payments has broader implications. And my informal survey of Substack writers found that most are fond of the company and plan to stick around for now — but not out of the sense of loyalty, shared mission or deep identification that used to run through media companies. What did you see that tells you they 'despise' it?
- anitil 4y agoIt doesn't seem like you're asking in good faith. Perhaps the previous poster could have said something like 'in my opinion the NYT editorial line despises...'. A list of articles is a pretty good basis for that sort of opinion. From what I understand, it's unlikely that a senior NYT editor would explicitly state the paper's opinion on this, which seems to be the proof that you're after, so we're left to extrapolate from their actual publication choices.
- LouisSayers 4y agoIf that's the case then they're doing a bad job at helping it to die. I didn't know about Substack before, but now I do! :D
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- zitterbewegung 4y agoAlso, their users are probably going to get worse support and might have to switch platforms....
- davidweatherall 4y ago> 13 employee layoff at a 90 employee Let's rephrase that to 14% to sound more impactful
- sshine 4y agoHow about: Substack fires every 7th employee!
- pessimizer 4y agoSeptimated.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago> 14% to sound more impactful What makes you say that? I don't understand why the percentage figure would carry more weight. I look at 13/90 my brain says "roughly twenty percent", which is too much. Perhaps some people, equally innumerate as I, misjudge the other way. Either way, the facts remain the same. Do you think numbers expressed as percentages have a different psychological effect? Maybe they sound more authoritative or clever?
- codyjones 4y agoIt would carry more weight to someone who has never heard of Substack or doesn't know how big a company it is. They'd assume it was a large company because of who was reporting about it.
- nonrandomstring 4y agoAh yes, they're hiding the body count. Makes sense now.
- dghlsakjg 4y agoI know what substack is and I fell for it. 13 people losing their jobs isn’t national news and they know it.
- 4y ago
- __derek__ 4y agoNote that it's in the Media Business section, and Substack has been an important Media story the last few years. This seems like a normal story for someone on the Media beat to write.
- lmm 4y agoThey're a lot more culturally relevant than "90 employees" would suggest. And, sure, NYT is probably happy to report on their rival's misfortune.
- setgree 4y agoWhen 20 people quit Basecamp, that got a Times article too [0] -- though also a lot of chatter on HN [1]. FWIW I agree with a different comment on this thread that Substack gets disproportionate attention in traditional media because its business model is a financial threat. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/04/30/business/stock-market-today https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/04/30/business/stock-marke... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998127 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998127