Substack may turn out to be the best new digital institution for journalism and journalists for this decade. It hasn’t gone sour like Twitter, it has reached a degree of commercial take-off which seems still to be eluding Medium, and it has attracted lots of great journalists and commentators. Arguably, it has been better for journalists than for journalism per se. I say this because most of the best writers on Substack have learned their stylistic, reportage, editing skills elsewhere — in traditional publications: newspapers, magazines or the academy. But the company has given financial and reputational success to some excellent writers and commentators: Nate Silver, Timothy Snyder and Matthew Yglesias to name a few that I have enjoyed.
The Financial Times reports that Substack has added more than 1 million subscribers in the 6 months since Donald Trump’s election and is benefitting from an influx of traditional media writers and executives. With the surge in attention and activity, the company is reporting positive cash flow and some of the star writers earn substantial incomes, a few getting well into seven figures. Substack’s commissions and set-up costs are light — so revenue moves directly to the author’s pocket. Of course the plant, overheads, promotion and distribution costs, for running your own media operation, through a web app, are minimal in comparison to traditional media (magazines, newspapers or broadcast TV). Substack is not alone, there are a slew of vehicles for the new informal, independent, grass roots, journalism that is filling or replacing the Twitter gap and the local newspaper chasm, (WordPress, Medium, Ghost for example) and it is notable that these smart commercial solutions are attractive to writers and to subscribers. It is notable, also, that the pricing of the subscription plans, as for podcasts, are quite close to the subscription plans for digital only access to magazines: monthly, annual or full-strength patron. Substacks usually have a free tier, but the paid tiers can be quickly adjusted to $5, $8, $10 per month; and sometimes much higher premium prices are quoted. These prices that stack up against digital magazine subscriptions with their weekly or monthly issues.
The churn rate for Substacks may be higher than for print or digital magazines. For sure: established print magazines have solid assets in favour of their continuing relevance and importance: reputation and permanence. Substacks and their peers are smart, nimble and speedy. But they cannot easily aspire to become a ‘journal of record’ or authoritative in the best tradition of well established magazines. It is easier to be a digital gadfly or butterfly than to get the collective editorial heft of the Spectator, Autocar, or Gramophone. Reliability and the accuracty of their archival record are assets that the magazine industry will increasingly emphaise in the new media space. And the reputation of each magazine is crucially focussed on its title and its unique identity with readers and browsers.
Archives will always play a strong part in making a magazines’s reputation for authority: and it is not simply a matter of their depth and tradition. The digital archives of printed magazines are reliable, accurate and citeable (and generally not editable or amended) which is surely important for a journal of record. A problem nicely captured by BoSacks in this piece yesterday on the related problem of trusting AI. Substack and its competitors in the auto-journalism space, have ‘archives’ that can be easily edited, deleted and altered by their authors. Archives for full-strength magazines are also likely to be much more atmospheric and attractive through the illustrations and design of their pages. A matter to be kept in mind when thinking about the value of subscriptions and the importance of loyal readers, renewals and subscriptions. The prospective permanence of the digital magazine, with its accurate and enduring archive is a strong counter-weight to churn. Magazines that carry their past with them in their digital subscriptons are also projecting that archived past to a future where readers will be more digital and reliant on search and reputation. The digital first magazines of the future will be most clearly digital first with their always on searchable and citeable archives.
This post was first published by BoSacks in the Heard on the Web newsletter (13 May 25)