Let's talk about Substack
Let's talk about Substack
Recent criticism of the newsletter platform has ranged from ruining journalism to funding anti-Trans voices. What's actually going on here?
A number of years ago, I pitched a story package in an editorial meeting about trying to live an ethical life. The idea was that we’d divide modern living into a half dozen elements — working, eating, sleeping, socializing, traveling and recreation — and get a handful of different writers to attempt to be as ethical as possible in their choices regarding each specific aspect. It was assumed that each writer, no matter how hard they tried, would eventually crumble to the callings of convenience and comfort.
The point was to show that it was impossible to be wholly ethical, which on reflection, doesn’t seem as clever as I thought it was at the time, and besides, The Good Place ended up doing this in a far more entertaining and engaging fashion over four seasons of television.
I was reminded of this recently when people started getting upset about Substack, the delivery and hosting mechanism for newsletters (yes, like the very one you’re reading). The first wave of criticism seemed to suggest that Substack is bad because it allows journalists who cut their teeth on a traditional newsroom hierarchy to "cash out" on the reputation it granted them.
Remember this thread?
It’s a resolutely stupid critique. First of all, it’s absurd to suggest anyone working in journalism owes anything to an industry built to squeeze as much as possible out of those producing the content on which it runs.
You know that story idea I mentioned at the beginning? Want to know why it never took off? A couple weeks after I pitched it — after it received enthusiastic support from the managing editor and editor-in-chief — buyouts and layoffs were announced. My team, which started with 10 people, was quickly reduced to five (then to three, shortly after) with the same expectations in place in terms of content production. Comedically, that type of special feature and resource-intensive package we wanted to create about the difficulty of “being good” became just as unachievable as actually leading an ethical life.
The problem with journalism isn’t that media outlets are being used as stepping stones. It’s that the industry has a lot of trouble monetizing its efforts.
Secondly, the misguided commentary from Roberts seems like a thinly veiled shot at Glenn Greenwald, whose first post on Substack can read at times like a complaint about his previous outlet’s journalistic practices: “They wanted to edit and fact-check my work. Can you believe it?”
The only problem is that Greenwald, and many other Substack writers who “purport to be serious” (oh god, that Twitter thread is as pretentious as it is myopic) didn’t make a name for themselves through a media outlet. They began their careers as independent writers and bloggers. If anything, outlets tried to cash in on their audiences originally before the writers departed for Substack.
It’s a nice and tidy image, but these writers didn’t go to J-school, get an internship, write on assignment before rising through the ranks; and they don’t owe their careers to a cigar-chomping editor who took them aside one day to say, “I like your moxie, kid. Keep your head down, sport, and maybe one day, you’ll amount to something.”
The criticism against Substack has shifted in the weeks since this ill-advised call for allegiance to the industry, however, to something a little more interesting. It’s been revealed — first in whispers, then official acknowledgment — that Substack has given some writers an advance to write for them.
Substack’s regular business model is pretty straightforward. It lets newsletter writers sell subscriptions to their work, and it takes 10 per cent of any revenue they generate. The imaginatively named Substack Pro, however, offers an upfront wad of cash to cover a writer’s first year on the platform in exchange for 90 per cent of first year subscription income. After that rookie season, it flips back to the 10 per cent tax everyone else pays.
The practice, in itself, isn’t objectionable, but the people to whom Substack is choosing to extend its Pro offer is ruffling feathers. The main complaint is that a lot of “problematic” writers — Matty Yglesias and Freddie deBoer have been the most open about the arrangement — have been chosen.
Both Jude Ellison Sady Doyle and Anaïs Escobar Mathers have left the site as a result, citing the predominance of anti-Trans voices essentially being supported by a cut of the subscription revenue they generate. As someone who has chosen to depart a media outlet for reasoning that can be best described as something between self-righteousness and self-sabotage, I respect their decision immensely. However, the respective written rationales for their departures reveal an alternative culprit that isn’t fully articulated.
The people they cite as problematic writers on the Substack platform — who influenced their decision — are not all part of the Pro program. Some were courted by Substack, others came of their own volition. I think most of us who use Substack in any form — reading, writing, earning an income — had thought of it as a self-publishing platform when, what we’ve learned recently is, there’s an entirely different side to the company that has much more in common with book publishing.
The lack of transparency while attempting to be two different things is the root of the precarious issue, if not the problem entirely. As soon as choices over the division of payments are made, Substack loses its ability to call itself a self-publishing platform (where it’s a little more forgivable to give abhorrent voices a platform) and becomes a media outlet unto itself. Once that happens, transparency is paramount to attaining an audience’s trust — and also, the complete understanding of those who are using the platform to generate income for themselves and revenue for the outlet.
I think any criticism Substack receives should be directed toward not making its business practices as clear as possible. Yesterday, the aforementioned deBoer suggested that media members were out to get Substack out of some sort of displaced anger toward the industry as a whole. To me, that’s a scarecrow argument. Sure, there’s been some criticism about Substack’s practices and its hiring of certain writers, but even the recode story to which deBoer links as proof of Media Twitter’s grudge reads like a pretty even-handed account of what’s happening right now.
I think whether you choose to read, write or use Substack as an earning tool is very similar to the choices you make when it comes to reading, writing or publishing a book. Would you buy a book you wanted to read from a publisher who also produced Justin Trudeau’s musings on equality or Stephen Harper’s memoir? Would you write for that publisher even if they gave a more sizeable advance to Bari Weiss or Amber A'Lee Frost?
We make so many compromises every day that, as I mentioned from the outset (as a topic I once wanted to explore more) of this entry, it's impossible to exist as a completely ethical being. The structures and systems we lean on minute by minute (sometimes second by second) have all been corrupted to a degree. I admire everyone who makes ideological choices that primarily affect themselves and result in something less convenient, less comfortable for themselves — whether I agree with it or not; or follow in their footsteps or not.
For now, I’m going to continue using Substack (without any direct payment or seeking subscriber payment) and reading other people’s Substack entries. But I also used to buy chicken from grocery stores, so who knows what behaviours I’ll alter in the future.
Trying to be good is as much a navigation as a negotiation. We’re all vegetarians wearing leather shoes to some degree.
Photo by Samuel Austin on Unsplash