
Ben Smith on the rise of Substack and independent journalists [video] - lobbly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xgLOHW42Nw#t=12
======
GreeniFi
Previous thinking (based on experience) was that people paid for access to a
news platform rather than to individual name-brand writers. This was
apparently why earlier efforts at micro-payments for articles failed and/or
subscriptions failed.

Ben Smith seems to think something has changed in the market such that people
are now willing to make small payments to individual writers. However Smith
does not say what has changed.

I’d be curious to know what’s different this time and welcome any insight from
the board.

~~~
groby_b
My take is that previous attempts were "how can we get news readers to pay",
and current attempts are "what news do people who pay for news want".

And in general, if you pay for news, you want opinionated voices you can
deeply trust, and whose bias you're familiar with. That's not possible on an
aggregated news platform, since that by its nature will try to be all things
to a fairly large group of people - you need a mass audience to pay for all
the writers. Individual writers can afford a smaller audience. (Which also
means they can avoid giving away much content to regularly draw an audience)

What that means for large-scale/expensive reporting is an interesting
question, because the independent model doesn't work for that almost by
definition.

~~~
cjbest
I think this is right.

> whose bias your are familiar with I This is fair, but there is a positive
> version which is "whose worldview you understand, and find
> interesting/valuable"

Every person and organization comes with some kind of bias - even if part of
that bias is "try to be clear eyed and tell the truth".

The advantage of subscribing directly to writers is that you get to choose
explicitly who you want to trust, and having done so the writers' incentive is
to keep that trust.

As a writer, you get to make your own bet about what work is important, you
get paid in proportion to the value you create, and only your readers can fire
you.

~~~
clairity
while your description of the phenomenon may be somewhat accurate for some
subset of news consumers, the implication that this is a reasonable position
is disturbing.

truth and trust do intertwine deeply in the subconscious, but that doesn't
mean we shouldn't use our conscious brains to disentangle them when it leads
us astray.

we should seek a variety of reasonable perspectives, especially including
differing ones to our own. trust the reasonable, even if disagreeable. that's
what get us to truth, not a flight to homogeneity.

and that's the lament here--it's getting harder and harder to find reasonable
perspectives because every media outlet, even the venerates like nytimes, are
leaning hard into partisanship and tribalism.

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igammarays
The problem with "independent journalism" is the loss of a shared coherent
narrative about the world. There's just no shared context. Many don't even
watch/read the news anymore. Earlier this year I introduced my grandma to
YouTube, but I was surprised how fast she got hooked and stopped watching
conventional news altogether, so much so that she hadn't even _heard_ of the
George Floyd protests. Whereas previously I used to talk with my grandma about
stuff on the news, that stopped after she started watching YouTube, because
her channel subscriptions do not intersect with mine, so we have nothing in
common to talk about.

It's a sort of regression to pre-modern tribalism where only "local" events
matter to you -- except "local" means whatever independent content creators
you are subscribed to, and their respective tribes. While this was always the
case for much of the developing and pre-modern world, this is a new state of
affairs for the West. The educated Western public is now regressing to a state
of ignorance about global affairs to the extent that they have no idea what
"global affairs" even means, all the while believing that they have a "better"
worldview due to their "woke" independent analysis. The real problem is the
loss of a shared context and common knowledge with which to engage in
conversation with people around you.

~~~
clairity
why conceive of it as a problem? heterogeneity of thought and view lends more
engaging and interesting conversations, new learnings and perspectives, and a
more resilient and innovative society to boot, even if it's more of a
challenge. it's surely better that you have to work at a conversation than
have some bland homogeneity of thought for faux-comfort bubbles.

comfort is entirely orthogonal to journalism anyway. it's purpose is to
(mis-)inform, not to entertain and provide bonding fodder. you have plenty of
other, better (media) avenues for that (movies, tv, etc).

------
Kye
They're not really independent as long as they're stuck on Substack's domain.
You can export your list and maybe get some % to move to another newsletter
host, but any links to past newsletters will forever be on their domain.

Substack keeps saying "eventually" on using your own, but with no clear
timeline or real justification for not launching with it. Same reason I won't
touch Hey.

~~~
cjbest
Substack founder here. You might be surprised at the relative importance of
the mailing list. You also have your own Stripe account on Substack.

That said, it’s a fair point, and I understand wanting to wait until we
support it.

~~~
edouard-harris
Interesting. My own speculation had been that giving Substack creators their
own domains wouldn't necessarily be in the creators' interest as a group,
because of things like e.g. Apple's policy with respect to blocking third-
party cookies. Keeping everything on substack.com means there's less friction
when a user signs up for their second (or N + 1th) newsletter, which surely
implies more revenue for creators in the aggregate.

------
aphextron
I would argue that independent journalists are not journalists. Journalism
requires being held to a body of professional standards upheld by a common
organization of other trained journalists. A lot of the problem with our
current media landscape is that someone's speculative opinion piece on
JoeBlowKnows.com is held in the same esteem as a fact checked, multiple source
article from the New York Times. Ethical independent 'journalists' can surely
exist, but lets call them what they are: bloggers.

~~~
ksdale
I respectfully disagree completely. I'm an attorney, and my profession is
completely beholden to this kind of credentialism, where you can't possibly do
the work if you aren't a member of the club.

I happen to believe that the work is the work, and it's done well or poorly
regardless of your membership in an organization or an association. And at
least for attorneys, most of the work isn't nearly as difficult as we like to
pretend. It's just more lucrative for the profession to be scandalized at the
idea that people who aren't trained professionals could do many of the things
we do.

Journalism does require standards, but I'd say as long as the standards are
adhered to, journalism is happening.

~~~
reilly3000
I respectfully disagree with your disagreement. The point isn't that
journalists need a more rigorous passage into a professional association or
credentialling. Its more that journalism is a team effort, where writers, line
editors, fact checkers, designers, data folks and others work together to
produce an accurate and complete work.

You wouldn't take on a big case of national impact entirely solo and expect,
and journalists can't produce a trustworthy product in isolation, not in the
long run at least.

~~~
luckylion
> Its more that journalism is a team effort, where writers, line editors, fact
> checkers, designers, data folks and others work together to produce an
> accurate and complete work.

And yet it produces so unbelievably large and frequent issues with the
accuracy and completeness that this either does not help, is not the goal, or
journalists not working for large publishers must get this wrong all the time,
all over the place. I don't think that's the case, and I do think that the
belief that it somehow helps is specifically why there are so many giant
issues with the current media products.

~~~
Evidlo
Or possibly standards in journalism have fallen and this is the next step.

~~~
dsparkman
I would say most of what passes for journalism, is no longer journalism.

Journalism is about passing on the who-what-when-where-why. Factual
information to the public. You see very little of that these days. Too many
opinion in basic article.

~~~
ksdale
People are always mentioning Gell-Mann amnesia as well. I think this is one
area that independent writers, especially ones who have a lot of experience in
a particular industry, can add a lot. They can write about events, technology,
and scholarship, from the perspective of an expert. They _can_ be better at
passing on the who-what-when-where-why because they know enough to not just
have to take anyone's word for it, and if they're good, they're confident
enough in their position that they don't have to signal any sort of
ideological credentials to have their facts accepted, so they don't signal.
Obviously this is an ideal, but I think it's a very plausible one.

