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As a reader of several Substack writers, I find the individualist approach frustrating, and - I feel - ultimately counter-democratic in a way. By the latter I

As a reader of several Substack writers, I find the individualist approach frustrating, and - I feel - ultimately counter-democratic in a way. By the latter I mean that with legacy media - despite the political slant (either way) of the publication as a whole, you generally have access to a multitude of voices. With the Substack model that isn't the case - unless you limit yourself to the free options, or are wealthy enough to subscribe to as many writers as you like. I suppose there are Substack amalgamations out there, grouping writers on a common outlet, but those who have managed to gather enough of a living striking out on their own are probably not going to worry too much about whether they are also available as part of a more economically accessible and diverse collection of voices using a different subscription model that collates multiple writers for a single cost. Ultimately that means that access to a truly wide range of authoritative voices is potentially limited to the wealthy.

aiappreciator 4y ago
"access to a multitude of voices" You mean a multitude of groupthinked, editor supervised voices? More people != better opinions unless there is a constant debate. And the modern subscription driven model for large newspapers means appealing to the base, and neutrality is bad for revenue. Substackers also have to appeal to their base. But individual idiosyncrasies and strong opinions are much better preserved when its just one person, instead of a n editor enforcing a hivemind.
mrangle 4y ago
You must have a huge "democratic" beef with books. Those being the dominant largely solitary-voiced format that people pay for. Before now, I've read anything that correlated them to being counter to democracy.
- codyb 4y ago
  There's libraries, at least in the USA, in a lot of places.
nradov 4y ago
After 30+ years of web publishing we still have no viable system for content micropayments. There's just no way I will sign up for any more monthly subscriptions; those build up and eat you alive. But I would be happy to pay a small amount to read an individual article if it was a frictionless one-click process. There have been many attempts to crack that problem but so far all have failed. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/the-case-for-micropayments/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/the-case-for-micropayments/
- ghaff 4y ago
  And there's an argument (almost certainly correct) from 25 years ago that the problem with microtransactions was that there's a mental transaction cost associated with every 5 cent payment. https://archive.is/fzL0I https://archive.is/fzL0I Small $$ subscriptions are a different variant of the same problem. To be fair, many of us used to have a bunch of magazine subscriptions--some of which were only $1-2 per month but I'm not sure the same mindset still applies. We do see things like Apple News+ that aggregate non-free content and perhaps that's something of a solution. We'll see. I do pay for the New York Times and The Economist but I mostly won't subscribe to individual sites online.
  - njarboe 4y ago
    Maybe this is true but it would be nice to have a technical solution in place that would facilitate a 5 cent payment so people could experiment with it. The US treasury of FED should do it at this point as it seems no one else will.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      Many startup failures in the dot-com era. Not sure why this should be a US Treasury service given there's a well-developed financial system in the US that facilitates lots of other payment options. (And have you ever looked at the hilariously barely late 90s website of TreasuryDirect?) I'm also not sure I want the US government deciding which publications are proper participants in an official micropayments scheme.
    - 4y ago
karaterobot 4y ago
I think this is a worthwhile point. My belief about Substack is that many of its initial appeals to writers were to people who were not happy at traditional publications. People who had brand names, and wanted better money, prestige, or editorial control than they were getting. So, it's definitely designed to provide isolated perspectives: isolated not only in the sense of being a magazine with a single voice, but also in the sense that it will tend to attract people a little further to the margins of the cultural discourse, who attract attention and bump up against editors. However, I don't believe this is a big problem, since there are many other places to get opinion and analysis other than Substack. In fact — and I have no basis for it other than intuition — it doesn't feel like Substack's model could ever make it that big. By nature, a magazine with one writer isn't going to provide enough content to be anybody's only source, and, as you say, there aren't that many people who are going to subscribe to dozens of Substack writers. Having tens of thousands of subscribers really doesn't make too much of a dent in the media landscape over all, it's just that it's very well monetized, so it's great for this handful of writers (and Substack Incorporated of course).
paxys 4y ago
I don't see that as a fundamental product limitation of Substack. Having the concept of a "publication" is probably something they will get to at some point. Medium followed the same path, and they now have multi-author publications as well. I'm guessing it's more a matter of engineering and product prioritization than some explicit decision towards maintaining individuality.
ctrlp 4y ago
Access to authentic diverse viewpoints is a luxury good you must pay for. Everyone who would be accurately informed must fund their own private intelligence service. The legacy media of a "multitude of voices" under one imprint is pretty rare and will still be editorialized within a local Overton window for any given publication. The plebs can only afford one or two subscriptions to their politically-approved list of "news" sources and must be satisfied with being told what to think from a limited menu. If you can't afford it, you're not meant to have it. You need to budget at least $200 USD per month for substack subscriptions. After that, you will need to budget about 10-20h per month to parsing their output and deciding which of the approved media outlets they would be allowed to write for if they weren't making more money with their own audiences. This will help you think critically about what they're trying to have you believe. For those who would not be welcome at even the most heterodox mainstream publications, you will need to spend a bit of time deciding how it is they can afford to be writing for a living. You will need to track down their incomes until you are satisfied that their shadowy patrons are either dark money influence campaigns and/or CIA-NGO grants. Use this information to triangulate the various positions you are presented with. The truth is somewhere in the nexus of lies.
- aiappreciator 4y ago
  There's no need to play the edgelord here. Your average person does not have $200USD/month lying around for news. Even cable packages aren't that expensive. But they don't need that much either, just budgeting $15 a month is more than sufficient to have a favorite paid substack, and several other free substacks. Most people don't have the time to analyze that much information. Its sufficient to know that viewpoints other than MSM-peddled-narratives exist, that gives people a healthy skepticism, without needing to spend days each month just analyzing the news.
  - ctrlp 4y ago
    ok, shoot. $5/mo per sub. Pick three for your $15 budget and a few freebies. I submit it is not sufficient merely to know that non-MSM narratives exist to have the skills sufficient to detect military-grade influence campaigns.
gnicholas 4y ago
> With the Substack model that isn't the case - unless you limit yourself to the free options, or are wealthy enough to subscribe to as many writers as you like. Don't most authors have at least some free content? The only substack where I've regularly encountered locked content on is Emily Oster (who writes about parenting issues). I read on substack a dozen or two times weekly, and I've never found the paywalls to be an issue. Would it be nice to have subscriptions to five or 10 newsletters? Sure. But it would hardly change my life, since most news is available from many outlets, even if you're looking for a particular perspective.

aiappreciator 4y ago

"access to a multitude of voices" You mean a multitude of groupthinked, editor supervised voices? More people != better opinions unless there is a constant debate. And the modern subscription driven model for large newspapers means appealing to the base, and neutrality is bad for revenue. Substackers also have to appeal to their base. But individual idiosyncrasies and strong opinions are much better preserved when its just one person, instead of a n editor enforcing a hivemind.

mrangle 4y ago

You must have a huge "democratic" beef with books. Those being the dominant largely solitary-voiced format that people pay for. Before now, I've read anything that correlated them to being counter to democracy.

codyb 4y ago
There's libraries, at least in the USA, in a lot of places.

nradov 4y ago

After 30+ years of web publishing we still have no viable system for content micropayments. There's just no way I will sign up for any more monthly subscriptions; those build up and eat you alive. But I would be happy to pay a small amount to read an individual article if it was a frictionless one-click process. There have been many attempts to crack that problem but so far all have failed. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/the-case-for-micropayments/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/the-case-for-micropayments/

ghaff 4y ago
And there's an argument (almost certainly correct) from 25 years ago that the problem with microtransactions was that there's a mental transaction cost associated with every 5 cent payment. https://archive.is/fzL0I https://archive.is/fzL0I Small $$ subscriptions are a different variant of the same problem. To be fair, many of us used to have a bunch of magazine subscriptions--some of which were only $1-2 per month but I'm not sure the same mindset still applies. We do see things like Apple News+ that aggregate non-free content and perhaps that's something of a solution. We'll see. I do pay for the New York Times and The Economist but I mostly won't subscribe to individual sites online.
- njarboe 4y ago
  Maybe this is true but it would be nice to have a technical solution in place that would facilitate a 5 cent payment so people could experiment with it. The US treasury of FED should do it at this point as it seems no one else will.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Many startup failures in the dot-com era. Not sure why this should be a US Treasury service given there's a well-developed financial system in the US that facilitates lots of other payment options. (And have you ever looked at the hilariously barely late 90s website of TreasuryDirect?) I'm also not sure I want the US government deciding which publications are proper participants in an official micropayments scheme.
  - 4y ago

karaterobot 4y ago

I think this is a worthwhile point. My belief about Substack is that many of its initial appeals to writers were to people who were not happy at traditional publications. People who had brand names, and wanted better money, prestige, or editorial control than they were getting. So, it's definitely designed to provide isolated perspectives: isolated not only in the sense of being a magazine with a single voice, but also in the sense that it will tend to attract people a little further to the margins of the cultural discourse, who attract attention and bump up against editors. However, I don't believe this is a big problem, since there are many other places to get opinion and analysis other than Substack. In fact — and I have no basis for it other than intuition — it doesn't feel like Substack's model could ever make it that big. By nature, a magazine with one writer isn't going to provide enough content to be anybody's only source, and, as you say, there aren't that many people who are going to subscribe to dozens of Substack writers. Having tens of thousands of subscribers really doesn't make too much of a dent in the media landscape over all, it's just that it's very well monetized, so it's great for this handful of writers (and Substack Incorporated of course).

paxys 4y ago

I don't see that as a fundamental product limitation of Substack. Having the concept of a "publication" is probably something they will get to at some point. Medium followed the same path, and they now have multi-author publications as well. I'm guessing it's more a matter of engineering and product prioritization than some explicit decision towards maintaining individuality.

ctrlp 4y ago

Access to authentic diverse viewpoints is a luxury good you must pay for. Everyone who would be accurately informed must fund their own private intelligence service. The legacy media of a "multitude of voices" under one imprint is pretty rare and will still be editorialized within a local Overton window for any given publication. The plebs can only afford one or two subscriptions to their politically-approved list of "news" sources and must be satisfied with being told what to think from a limited menu. If you can't afford it, you're not meant to have it. You need to budget at least $200 USD per month for substack subscriptions. After that, you will need to budget about 10-20h per month to parsing their output and deciding which of the approved media outlets they would be allowed to write for if they weren't making more money with their own audiences. This will help you think critically about what they're trying to have you believe. For those who would not be welcome at even the most heterodox mainstream publications, you will need to spend a bit of time deciding how it is they can afford to be writing for a living. You will need to track down their incomes until you are satisfied that their shadowy patrons are either dark money influence campaigns and/or CIA-NGO grants. Use this information to triangulate the various positions you are presented with. The truth is somewhere in the nexus of lies.

aiappreciator 4y ago
There's no need to play the edgelord here. Your average person does not have $200USD/month lying around for news. Even cable packages aren't that expensive. But they don't need that much either, just budgeting $15 a month is more than sufficient to have a favorite paid substack, and several other free substacks. Most people don't have the time to analyze that much information. Its sufficient to know that viewpoints other than MSM-peddled-narratives exist, that gives people a healthy skepticism, without needing to spend days each month just analyzing the news.
- ctrlp 4y ago
  ok, shoot. $5/mo per sub. Pick three for your $15 budget and a few freebies. I submit it is not sufficient merely to know that non-MSM narratives exist to have the skills sufficient to detect military-grade influence campaigns.

gnicholas 4y ago

> With the Substack model that isn't the case - unless you limit yourself to the free options, or are wealthy enough to subscribe to as many writers as you like. Don't most authors have at least some free content? The only substack where I've regularly encountered locked content on is Emily Oster (who writes about parenting issues). I read on substack a dozen or two times weekly, and I've never found the paywalls to be an issue. Would it be nice to have subscriptions to five or 10 newsletters? Sure. But it would hardly change my life, since most news is available from many outlets, even if you're looking for a particular perspective.