The Substack frenzy seems like a thing of the past, but lots of publishers are still leaning into newsletters. "They’re a great minimally viable product."
It’s strange to think that I knew what Substack was as soon as it was put in front of me. But I did—it was an attempt to wrap email in a platform, with promising initial promises, but the goal of strengthening Substack itself.Sure, there were a lot of things about Substack that looked good at the outset—the fact that they effectively gave the platform away for free was a vast improvement over the model of charging money after you reached a certain subscriber size—but every new publisher that jo…
Numlock Sunday: Ernie Smith on the Swift end of a music record
By Walt Hickey Welcome to the Numlock Sunday edition. This week, I spoke to Ernie Smith who writes the Tedium and Midrange newsletters. A week ago he had a great story, ‘A Chart-Record Feast 🎶’ in Midrange. Here's what I wrote about it: Last week saw two milestones on the music charts. The first is that “All Too Well” by Taylor Swift reached the number one spot on Billboard’s Hot 100, and at
As burnout and new opportunities beckon, newsletter writers navigate the awkward matter of quitting—and issuing refunds. It’s just the latest wrinkle in the digital economy’s complications of work and worth.
As Substack reports a million paid subscribers to its newsletters this week, I’m often left wondering what might have happened to the newsletter space had Substack remained a business that only grew as its audience did.Substack started out as a company with a pitch that anyone who wanted to could start a paid newsletter and, with the right amount of work, claim financial independence. But at some point, the company broke this essential model by beginning to accept venture capital money, culmina…
This month, we’re introducing the first in a series of writer residencies designed to give established writers a place to share knowledge and inspire the Substack community.
Each year, we ask some of the smartest people in journalism and media what they think is coming in the next 12 months. At the end of a trying 2020, here’s what they had to say.
Ann Friedman is a writer, editor and co-founder of Tomorrow. "The notion of kissing up is super weird to me. You should always be kissing down and sideways, to the people who are going to be working alongside you and coming up behind you. I'm
Beyond Outsourcing: The New Threats Facing Local Journalism
Local newspapers have already faced issues with outsourcing and an array of cuts for years. But the threat is changing—and you should know what it looks like.