The coronavirus global pandemic has ravaged the global economy. Millions of people around the world are getting laid off, furloughed, or being asked to take pay cuts. Debt is pilling up, people are several months behind on paying their rent, and food banks are being taxed to their limit. And this may only be the beginning. Unless we can quickly develop a vaccine there may be more bad news on the way. More people joining the unemployment line. More people struggling to make ends meet. More people feeling the effects of the worse financial crisis this country has seen since the Great Depression.
The media industry has been hit particularly hard. On a seemingly daily basis my Twitter feed is inundated with layoff announcements as publications hemorrhage subscribers. The Atlantic, Quartz, Wired, and Buzzfeed News are among some of the publications to announce recent staff reductions. There has never been a more tenuous time to be a journalist and that’s saying something for a profession that has always hung in the balance.
Thankfully, there may be something that all of these recently unemployed journalists can do to stop the bleeding: take control of their own destinies. Flip the switch. Instead of the top down approach to journalism that has prevailed for years, one in which publications and top-level editors set the agenda for journalists to follow, a new approach, one in which journalists become the star of the show and chart their own course could take shape.
At the forefront of this paradigm shift is Substack, a writing platform that lets writers set up their own paid newsletters. It’s a natural progression, one that seems like the next step in the evolution of self-publishing. In fact, it’s a step above Medium, which had come to us from one of the founders of Twitter – the original self-expression platform. Substack, meanwhile, offers journalists more control over their own future and in turn more control over the future of the entire media industry.
As the New York Times puts it, “Substack represents a radically different alternative, in which the ‘media company’ is a service and the journalists are in charge. It’s what one of the pioneers of the modern newsletter business, the tech analyst Ben Thompson, describes as a ‘faceless’ publisher. And you can imagine it or its competitors offering more services, from insurance to marketing to editing, reversing the dynamic of the old top-down media company and producing something more like a talent agency, where the individual journalist is the star and the boss, and the editor is merely on call.”
One person who epitomizes this movement is Josh Constine, the former editor of TechCrunch who recently left to do this own thing as a venture capitalist. When the news of his departure broke most people assumed that meant that the scoops that Josh had become known for would stop as well. But that has hardly been the case. He’s still out there breaking news about Apple’s new QR code designs and the latest social media influencer craze which today includes a TikTok star developing a literal cult following. It’s just that now he’s doing it on Substack. Hoping to ride the wave that comes with being a trendsetter.
I actually had the privilege of meeting Josh at a tech conference in San Francisco a few years ago after he gave the keynote address. Just long enough for me to introduce myself and for him to quickly forget who I was. But, that’s okay. Why would he pay attention to me? After all, at the time I was a nobody. Certainly not a journalistic star to say the least. But maybe one day soon I will be. Maybe, one day, I’ll have a successful paid newsletter with thousands of subscribers helping me bank six figures a year. Just like he is aiming to do with his Moving Product newsletter. We also won’t be alone. The best and brightest journalistic minds in the world may follow suit.
The coronavirus may be accelerating the demise of print journalism but its not the root cause. The writing has been on the wall for a long time. There was always a sea change coming. But that doesn’t mean that it has to be all doom and gloom. In today’s day and age of fake news and filter bubbles that create negative feedback loops we need journalism now more than ever. And thanks to Substack we may be able to still have. It’ll just look different. The model will have been flipped. The journalist will now be front and center. The star of the show. The way it should have been all along.
Is Substack the Greatest Idea Ever?
Leave a comment