Somewhat tangential to your point, but: I've been surprised at how many paid Substacks don't seem to actually offer much (or any!) original content. They are run by writers whose output mostly runs in conventional media outlets, and the Substack posts consist mostly of links to those outlets, with maybe a paragraph or two of how-I-wrote-this-article commentary, or of a bit of color that didn't make the primary piece. I assume those writers see Substack as something like Patreon, where people are giving you money because they want you to have it and not because they expect to receive something of value in return.
I also didn't renew my subscription. I read Deadspin originally because it offered analysis of sports that couldn't be found elsewhere. In the past year, I almost never read anything on Defector which was surprising or original. The DeBoer critique in the spring sealed it for me.
“Relatively few people pay to read a newsletter to signal their virtue.”
Wow this is crazy wrong. Virtue signal may be the wrong term, but a tremendous number of people buy products they never use and subscribe to print and digital media they never read because they identify with and support certain politics, individuals and groups. I don’t personally like Glenn Greenwald but he is extremely intelligent and surely knows how much his subscribers consume and don’t consume of what they pay for. And while he is never ever going to tell you, I’m sure he gets a kick that a sizable portion never read much at all.
I canceled my subscription recently. Site is boring and its politics are just tedious at this point.
Somewhat tangential to your point, but: I've been surprised at how many paid Substacks don't seem to actually offer much (or any!) original content. They are run by writers whose output mostly runs in conventional media outlets, and the Substack posts consist mostly of links to those outlets, with maybe a paragraph or two of how-I-wrote-this-article commentary, or of a bit of color that didn't make the primary piece. I assume those writers see Substack as something like Patreon, where people are giving you money because they want you to have it and not because they expect to receive something of value in return.
Really brilliantly laid out, here.
I also didn't renew my subscription. I read Deadspin originally because it offered analysis of sports that couldn't be found elsewhere. In the past year, I almost never read anything on Defector which was surprising or original. The DeBoer critique in the spring sealed it for me.
“Relatively few people pay to read a newsletter to signal their virtue.”
Wow this is crazy wrong. Virtue signal may be the wrong term, but a tremendous number of people buy products they never use and subscribe to print and digital media they never read because they identify with and support certain politics, individuals and groups. I don’t personally like Glenn Greenwald but he is extremely intelligent and surely knows how much his subscribers consume and don’t consume of what they pay for. And while he is never ever going to tell you, I’m sure he gets a kick that a sizable portion never read much at all.
Good shit