![]() Substack’s thesis is, in part, that media companies underpay their most prominent writers. I turned down an offer of an advance well above my Times salary, in part because of the editing and the platform The Times gives me, and in part because I didn’t think I’d make it back - media types often overvalue media writers.) (Substack has courted a number of Times writers. (Speaking of that spirit: Bustle Digital Group confirmed to me that it’s reviving the legendary blog Gawker under a former Gawker writer, Leah Finnegan.)Īnd a New York Times opinion writer, Charlie Warzel, is departing to start a publication on Substack called Galaxy Brain. ![]() Lavery, but also the former Yahoo News White House correspondent Hunter Walker, the legal writer David Lat and the columnist Heather Havrilesky, who told me she will be taking Ask Polly from New York Magazine to “regain some of the indie spirit and sense of freedom that drew me to want to write online in the first place.” The writers moving there full time in recent days include not just Mr. ![]() Substack embodies this cultural shift, but it’s riding the wave, not creating it.Īnd despite a handful of departures over politics, that wave is growing for Substack. And Silicon Valley investors, eager to disrupt and angry at their portrayal in big media, have been gleefully backing it. This power shift is a major headache for big institutions, from The New York Times to record labels. In Hollywood, too, power has migrated toward talent, whether it’s marquee showrunners or actors. It’s also been the case for adult performers on OnlyFans, musicians on Patreon, B-list celebrities on Cameo. This new ability of individuals to make a living directly from their audiences isn’t just transforming journalism. Sullivan, the liberal historian Heather Cox Richardson, and the confrontational libertarian Gle nn Greenwald. That includes most of the top figures on the platform, who make seven-figure sums from more than 10,000 paying subscribers - among them Mr. Though Substack paid advances to a few dozen writers, most are simply making money from readers. (Only Twitter retains that power.) Big media cancellation is often an offramp to a bigger income. This new direct-to-consumer media also means that battles over the boundaries of acceptable views and the ensuing arguments about “cancel culture” - for instance, in New York Magazine’s firing of Andrew Sullivan - are no longer the kind of devastating career blows they once were. For one, the new media economy promises both to make some writers rich and to turn others into the content-creation equivalent of Uber drivers, even as journalists turn increasingly to labor unions to level out pay scales. Substack has captivated an anxious industry because it embodies larger forces and contradictions. Substack, he said, has become a target for “a lot of people to project their anxieties.” “The mindshare Substack has in media right now is insane,” said Casey Newton, who left The Verge to start a newsletter on Substack called Platformer. For those who want to charge subscribers on their email list, Substack takes a 10 percent fee. Lavery, heatedly criticize the company.įeuds among and about Substack writers were a major category of media drama during the pandemic winter - a lot of drama for a company that mostly just makes it easy to email large groups for free. Signing up two high-profile transgender writers was a signal that Substack was trying to remain a platform for people who sometimes hate one another, and who sometimes, like Dr. ![]() Substack has been facing a mutiny from a group of writers who objected to sharing the platform with people who they said were anti-transgender, including a writer who made fun of people’s appearances on a dating app. ![]() His wife, Grace Lavery, an associate English professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who edits the Transgender Studies Quarterly, had already signed on for a $125,000 advance.Īlong with the revenue the Laverys will bring in, the move is good media politics for the company. Lavery’s household has two Substack incomes. Lavery’s subscription income for those two years. The contract is structured a bit like a book advance: Substack’s bet is that it will make back its money by taking most of Mr. Lavery already has about 1,800 paying subscribers to his Substack newsletter, The Shatner Chatner, whose most popular piece is written from the perspective of a goose. Lavery, who founded the feminist humor blog The Toast and will be giving up an advice column in Slate. “I think the thing that I’m the most looking forward to about this is to start a retirement account,” said Mr. Danny Lavery had just agreed to a two-year, $430,000 contract with the newsletter platform Substack when I met him for coffee last week in Brooklyn, and he was deciding what to do with the money. ![]()
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