This isn't the future, but it might speed the end of legacy media (and cause nasty spats)

How silly will newsroom squabbles seem if they're fighting over scraps because all the big readership draws took their ball and moved to Substack?

Substack probably isn't what the new journalism is going to look like. But it might well put a bullet into the head of what's left of the old journalism.

My Code 47 readers might not know much about Substack. It might seem like just another blog platform, a place to read words. That's partially true. It's a pretty minimalist word-processing and web-posting tool. It works! There's a few functions I wish it had, and a few annoying glitches, but overall, I have no complaints. After all, for me, it's free to use. I'm getting more than what I pay for. But Substack isn't the only free publishing platform, and I'm not sure it's the best. But what Substack does, very elegantly, is combine a bunch of backend functionality that gives journalists a genuine shot at going (mostly) independent.

There's a story my old boss Jon Kay told me once. He'd been asked to attend a National Post golf tournament, where Postmedia employees spent the day with various people the company wanted to make nice-nice with. Jon dutifully showed up on time and met a bunch of other National Post and Postmedia staff, and was shocked, he told me later, how few of them were journalists. The journalists thought of themselves as the paper, but there were huge numbers of people involved in all the non-journalism tasks that allow a paper to function — admin, sales, marketing, HR, payroll, and many others. And there were more of them than us. 

Substack, in effect, replaces a lot of those people.

Substack doesn't give you anything new. But it combines a bunch of important things into one simple system: it will publish my words (so no content management system is needed), host them online (no server space needed), collect emails for those who sign up (subscriber management), and process payments from paying subscribers and pay out the balance to me (accounting). Substack doesn't charge for any of this, but if you charge subscribers, they take a commission. (Since I don’t charge readers, Code 47 is a loss for them.)

I hope that wasn't too dull. But it was important to be clear what Substack is and what it offers: it lets the journalist focus on the journalism, and it takes care of a lot of the rest of the absolute essentials that would otherwise be major barriers to entry. In an era where legacy media outlets are dying, fast, this could well be a lifeline for many. So is Substack the future of journalism?

No, but it might play a big part in bringing the current era to a close. 

My friend Jen Gerson and I see alike on many issues, and I was amused to read on Friday, at The Line, her column on ... Substack! We were obviously both moved to write about it this week, though she beat me to the punch. Jen wrote specifically about some of the pushback against Substack, and noted, correctly, I think, that Substack is going to infuriate many who've invested their careers accumulating power in the traditional media ecosystem only to see a rival emerge that will allow prominent voices to go solo. Media is as beset as any other industry by busybodies and thought-policers. Indeed, some of the very public eruptions of discontent in newsrooms of late, though obviously fuelled by the industry's economic woes and COVID-19-related stresses (fiscal and emotional), really have been battles of control — who will be the authority in the traditional legacy outlets? Will they remain top-down hierarchies with clear chains of command, or will mobilized and activist newsrooms (with little left to lose in a dying industry) begin asserting more and more editorial control?

I honestly don't know. But I do know that any journalist with a sufficiently large profile can simply decide that they're not interested in waiting around to find out who’ll be on top after these internal battles, and leave to go plant their flag here at Substack. In that sense, I entirely agree with Jen — Substack is likely to draw more and more scrutiny and criticism from people who realize that the growth of an independent alternative option is going to begin rapidly undermining the power of traditional outlets to set the terms of debates, to "gatekeep," as we often say. How silly will the intra-newsroom squabbles of tomorrow seem if they're fighting over scraps because all the big readership draws took their ball and moved over to Substack? (To be clear, I'm not saying that that would stop the infighting. If anything, I expect it would amp it up, dramatically, as fights often become ever-more hostile as the stakes diminish.)

Jen is also 100-per-cent right that this is a major threat to modern newsrooms. Legacy media operations draw a disproportionate share of their readership from a few key contributors. People would be shocked how much readership accrues to a few big names. If those contributors left, the newsrooms would be in trouble. Many of those contributors probably have no interest in leaving; the current gig works for them just fine. But if they so chose, this would be a major crisis for many outlets. And they're barely hanging on as it is.

So in that sense, Substack could well be a major threat to what we think of as journalism today. But does that mean it'll replace journalism as we know it? No, I don't think so.

There's a few reasons for this. The first is quite simple: new tech startups come and go. Substack is a genuinely interesting and useful tool. But Google, Facebook or Microsoft may come out with some inferior competitor, throw the full weight of their corporate structure behind it, and crush Substack like a bug (or just buy it outright). A lot of people thought they'd find a way to make a living on Myspace, too, and we all know how that worked out (assuming you remember Myspace at all). 

Second, even if Substack does endure, the bigger it gets, the less likely it will be to resist pressure to become a gatekeeper. If that happens, writers will move on, and some Substack successor will emerge, promising to avoid the mistakes of the original. I don't know how long that would take, and hey, maybe it won't happen at all. But this is one major challenge I see to growing something like this. Its own success will become a millstone. 

This is why I think we will see Substack become a way station for successful efforts, not their ultimate home. Substack’s selling point is that you can start with all you need on day one. OK. What about day 500? People who are successful here will face enormous temptation to go fully independent, open their own website and simply pay someone to set up a mailing list manager, a payments system, and provide web hosting. These costs are major barriers to cash-strapped journalists starting from zero. But for a journalist who has already been successful going mostly solo, the added costs of going fully solo are not huge. People will build an audience here, and then move on. 

There are other reasons why Substack won’t be the future of journalism. Journalism should be a collaborative effort. Substack can automate the payments processing but it can’t give me a sober second read of a column draft I’m not quite sure works, only a trusted colleague can. I think readers will tire of paying a few bucks a month for each writer they enjoy and will come to yearn for a return to paying one larger fee for a roster of writers. (The Line is likely showing us the future more than any particular solo writer.) I also suspect some of the big-name, high-profile writers who have made such splashy announcements when coming here to work will eventually prove a victim of their own egos. I have known more than a few people who thought they were beyond the need of editing. I would say maybe one, possibly two, were actually right. The rest are simply walking a tight rope without a net every time they write something. It’s blown up in some of their faces already. For others it’s just a matter of time. 

There is a role for Substack, or something like Substack. For a writer with a small but devoted fanbase, or a reporter covering a niche beat, I can see it bringing in enough bucks to keep them alive without ever bringing in so much that they can afford to break free and go fully solo. It may also give some journalists the ability to stay in the job they love, and resist the siren song of a comfy comms or PR gig, while waiting for a job to come up in what’s left of the legacy media. And I’m enjoying my own time here. 

But is this the future? No. I think Substack is something that will accelerate and amplify the end of this era, and maybe make it messier, but not what will define the next.

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