It allows me to directly support writers I like and it allows them to write high quality long form content on their own schedule without the corrupting influence of ads.
They can be more independently minded.
Paying for the NYT I support writers I think are great, but also writers I think are terrible (that Taylor Lorenz spat recently), also policy I think is wrong (pushing to publish Scott Alexander’s last name). Most of the tech reporting is similarly bad. I also get ads and I’m forced to call to cancel.
Vox produces some great stuff, but also recode and that no handshakes article mocking Silicon Valley for taking the pandemic seriously. I don’t want to support those writers.
It’s nice to support writers individually and directly.
Maybe Steven Levy or Li Yuan will do newsletters too.
The next step is making it easy for them to own their own platform under their own domain and not on medium or substack.
How does one discover new writers in this world of balkanized newsletters? Even more importantly, how does one get exposed to different perspectives? Not necessarily radically different ones either, just writers with blind-spots that differ from those of your 5-10 favourite reporters/commenters/pundits?
I guess only after the writers have "atomized" can they be reaggregated into new dynamic configurations.
If I could pick my few favorite writers and combine them with some curated feeds I trusted, including a few "bubble bursters" giving me the top ranked stuff from people I consider idiots, that might just be a nice new news & commentary ecosystem!
On one hand there’s a risk people just go deeper into their own echo chambers with more extreme writers catering to only their audience.
That said, I actually have seen the opposite. The freedom from ads, low overhead, and editorial independence allows writers to go more in depth and discuss nuanced topics with people they may disagree with.
This isn’t a guarantee and it probably doesn’t have to be that way, but the variety of newsletters I read have a lot more depth than most of the articles in the NYT on any given day.
You’re right though that there’s a vacuum for discovery and community that needs to be filled in a world of decentralized independent platforms. I think there are probably interesting things there that have yet to be built.
Distributed producers of content isn't a new phenomena. You have 3 ways of discovery in these environments - curation/aggregation, discovery services and attribution.
I'm for this too. I've recently unsubscribed from the paper of record in my country. I was tired of its editorial slant which is relentlessly socially progressive. It's also overheavy with opinion columns and light on investigative journalism. Columnists who are apparently experts on a new topic every week. I feel a bit bad about it because newspapers are dying and I'm contributing to that now but another part of me thinks that their time has passed. What I want is information not opinion. I want reporters to bring new information to my attention and find out the facts about situations in an impartial manner. And I've no interest in fashion, cookery, wines, restaurants, relationships, puzzles horoscopes, etc. I can get all that elsewhere and in a far more comprehensive manner.
Not totally sure why, but I've been enjoying newsletters (though none of the paid via Substack) a lot more lately. The constant flow of news via HN, Twitter, etc. results in a kind of information overload and it's quite easy to just scroll on to the next item. While newsletters are essentially just 'more information', perhaps there's something about a curated set of information that (presumably) has some more thought put into it than the click of a retweet button that makes it more appealing to more completely ingest and engage with.
I guess my problem with email newsletters is that they show up in my email client, alongside other emails from real people. I really don’t want them there.
I think I would like newsletters if I had a separate system just for them. Not just a different inbox within my email client, but a different program altogether, so they occupy a different headspace.
I’ve used https://www.kill-the-newsletter.com/ a bit and I think it’s a great service, but the resulting feeds feel distinctly “non-native,” like the feeling of running a Windows program in Mac or Linux with Wine.
Newsblur (saas or self hosted) gives each user a random email address to which they can forward emails and have them presented as different sets of feeds depending on sender - so you can read these with the refs of your feeds.
All substack newsletters have an RSS feed. And many mailchimp ones do too - for this you need to go the page where old versions are archived and look for the “Subscribe” link.
That's exactly the reason that newsletters are effective, though. Objectively, the format is terrible (email is like trying to design for the web in the early 00's when each browser supported an overlapping subset of features), but email grants immediate, unfettered access to you, unmediated by social networks or websites where the author doesn't have total control over your experience.
There seems to be a web client in beta. Top right of their homepage, the "login" link. You might have to create an account on another device but you certainly seem to be able to use it from the web.
I just use a dedicated email address for newsletters. Easy as a separate iOS Mail account, read from the mail app.
Works well and I sort of find it calming having an email address that only gets (so far anyway) a handful of emails a day, that I signed up for. The only problem is it doesn't save your reading place in the email if you navigate to read another email.
For people who use Gmail, you can drag the newsletter out of your Primary tab and into Forums (or any other tab you create), which makes future editions of the newsletter appear there instead of going into your Primary email.
I wrote https://autosnoozer.com to solve this problem for myself. Give it a try. It helps me batch process my emails (including daily and weekly newsletters)
I agree, over the last week I've left my phone in my bedroom most of the day, removed my apps like brave, telegram and WhatsApp from the home screen. Just the phone, calculator and signal.
So much better, now the added step of opening an app drawer and looking for an app or searching allows me to disengage with all the constant reading.
I've subscribed to a few newsletters and leave to until the end of the day before bed or schedule some time and leave them unread.
Internet is a great tool, as long as it doesn't takeover.
Telegram is where I speak to a few close friends (groups - plenty of gifs) and my developers and VAs are on it who I talk to daily.
Not many people use SMS these days (not within my circle anyway) and anything that comes through SMS is crucial I.e my CRM goes down or there's a bug I get an SMS, which is fine.
Also, I turn all notifications off on my mobile. This puts the powers back in my hands.
Edit, notifications for SMS and phone are on, everything else, off.
There are already plenty of newsletters that consist of basically SEO spam. I don't think that's a problem, as long as I can identify and sign up for the good ones.
I’m an SEO person, and true SEO is about providing value and helping the searcher. Not about gaming it. Google does a great job at removing the black hats, and a pretty good job at removing the grey hats, but it’s not perfect.
Undoubtedly true. Doesn’t change the fact that true SEO is about helping the searcher resolve their query. Google is evil, but they have the best search algorithm in town.
Have been mulling a substack newsletter for a while, but since I need to work for a living, the risk of publishing doesn't justify the rewards. When I started writing seriously about 20+ years ago, the upside was to become a columnist, which was a kind of social tenure that allowed you to socially move and think freely. The endgame was to become a kind of public intellectual on the entry to a spectrum that included writers like Christopher Hitchens, Anne Applebaum, Niall Ferguson, Camille Paglia, Stephen Fry, Nassim Taleb, even Malcolm Gladwell or even Naomi Klein and lately to a lesser extent Matt Taibbi, Glen Greenwald and Laura Poitras. While most of these are academics, even 10 years ago there was a kind of public intellectual role that isn't really viable today. At the time, most of those writers if they hit hard times could still pick up a gig teaching, consulting or a fellowship to pay the rent, but today if they crossed a line, they wouldn't be able to get a greeter job at walmart. Maybe we're getting higher quality thinkers on the so-called "intellectual dark web" because the risks they take are so much greater than those taken by the Gore Vidals, Hunter S. Thompsons, H.L. Menckens, Seymour Herschs, Martin Amis's, and Hannah Arendts, who wrote in a time where there was a boundary between the public and the private spheres that enabled them to write challenging things, and this drives off anyone not willing to embark on a career-suicide pact to have their voice heard.
It's as though there has been a polarization and your option as a writer is to become Charles Bukowski or nothing (and by nothing I mean Paul Krugman). If it is indeed a trend that reporters are going rogue and writing news letters, I'd say it's another example of this polarization of risk, and they will start pulling punches, and they won't be able to do their best work without institutional air cover. Perhaps I'm just not brave, but to me the risk/reward of doing a blog or newsletter isn't quite there.
Reading the article and the comments, the economics of a newsletter are that it needs to be something that imposes opportunity cost on scrolling newsfeed crap on facebook, reddit, and to a lesser extent, HN. Viewed this way, the competitor of a newsletter isn't other newsletters, it's the junk feeds of readers. It's an exciting time to be a writer because we all know the demand for content is infinite, it's just a question of how to harness it and secure the means to be able to keep producing it when it lands something heavy and provocative.
Whether or not politics is interested in me (it isn't, just in my subservience and tax dollars), the market of people who write about politics is saturated by people who look, think and act the same as you.
Not really, I'm pretty awesome, most writers today aren't. But don't sell yourself short, I have no doubt there's a movement that would be interested in using you.
Is a newsletter not the same thing as a blog? If so, is this really a new trend? And if not, how is a newsletter in this context different from a blog?
I see there are already a ton of replies about push vs pull but the other (non-technical) aspect of a newsletter is the expected cadence of publishing. Some blogs have long gaps between posts and others have multiple posts per day. Newsletters typically define a daily or weekly schedule and stick to it. Sure, a blog could do the same thing, but they generally don’t. It sometimes feels like the difference between Last Week Tonight and a constant feed of breaking news clips.
Yes, looking at the technical differences is missing the point.
Newsletters tend to have a regular schedule, are easier for consumers to get started with (everyone uses email already), and have revenue models that can make it sustainable for the creator.
I mean, "push" has become more of a marketing term than a technical one. If we're talking marketing, sure, call it whatever you like.
But the technical distinction between the two holds. If you subscribe to an RSS feed and then never launch your reader again, nothing happens. If you subscribe to a newsletter and never check your inbox, your inbox still fills up.
I really don't see the difference you're trying to make. The RSS reader would also "fill up" in the sense that if you open it all the items would be marked unread just like in the inbox. Personally I use my inbox as my RSS reader by using a service that forwards RSS feeds to my inbox.
Everything is just a feed, email, RSS clients, social media, messaging apps, notifications channels. It's just a matter of managing which ones you make a habit of visiting and being notified about.
The local RSS reader you never launch is not executing. It does nothing - does not pull content. Nothing happens - no bits are transferred over the wire, nothing is written to disk until you initiate the pulls by launching the app.
Email servers operate continuously, so that when some publisher sends ("pushes") an email, that is delivered to your inbox, which will eventually fill up your quota (or the disk).
You can blur the distinction of what happens from the user's perspective all you like, and that's why I mentioned marketing phrasing. But it does not change what is actually happening.
Actually, under the IMAP protocol a client will make a connection and keep it open while the server pushes notifications about emails that have been pushed to the server, at which point the client will make the decision whether to transfer the mails to the client (or delete etc).
There's also the newer variant, PUSH IMAP. I think that one speaks for itself.
I think the focus on the technical difference of push vs. pull ignores the way that a push vs. pull mindset affects the content. A newsletter author expects the same audience (more or less) for each post, and so can build up a common shared context with the audience (as, e.g., Matt Levine does with recurring themes like "should index funds be illegal"). With blogs you generally write such that someone who landed from a search engine can dive right in.
A newsletter subscriber list is incredibly higher in value than most blog visitor traffic.
They have chosen to subscribe, you can contact them. You don't know your RSS subscriber count. It is a more highly engaged group, easier to build a relationship with.
And the number of people using RSS compared to using email who would consider a newsletter subscription is tiny.
One of the newsletters everyone points to when discussing this trend, Ben Thompson's Stratechery, now includes an audio podcast version of each day's written post read by Ben.
About a year ago, I stumbled on Substack's page that shows writers what they'd make, net of fees based on number of subscribers * price. 400 subscribers at $10/month works out to ~37,000/year. That's not a way to get rich, but it is almost exactly the US median income, and not far off the media journalist salary.[0] If you're willing to write well, reliably, the math of paid newsletters seems pretty friendly for making an ok living.
We're working on a simple drag/drop style report builder to turn jp notebooks into shareable reports. Currently in private beta, would you be interested in trying it out? If so, please drop me a line: rohit [at] dolphyn [dot] io . Thanks!
Are there actually that many "reporters" forming newletters? Most of what I see are opinion columnists forming newletters and doing zero reporting. No calling sources. No interviews. No digging into documents. No investigative anything.
Looking at the various substacks mentioned I see a lot that are "people writing their opinions on things they saw on Twitter". I'm not sure the world needs more people spouting opinions on a weekly basis.
Heated is the only one mentioned that seems to do any actual reporting.
What happened to being worried about the "Filter Bubble"? While I'm sure this will enable new voices to find a platform, which is (mostly) a good thing. However my prediction is that newsletter writer will be largely incentivized to write things that affirm rather than challenge their readers world views (since that will drive retention), and I'm pretty sure this will result in further polarization of our rhetoric and society.
Is it really so much better to choose your own bubble vs having it chosen for you by "an algorithm"?
If I was subscribed to a newsletter I would consider it a benefit if it included the occasional (thoughtful and smart) member of the out-group, so that I could better understand them and their arguments.
What it wouldn't do however, is allow you, or anyone else, to force that behavior an anybody else. I consider that a feature, not a bug, but I understand people will disagree on that.
To an extent, mainstream media is already a filter bubble. You get minor variation within an increasingly narrow viewpoint. Not sure if this will make it worse or better in aggregate.
Would-be writers that never gave it a shot are having a crack at newsletters too. I've started one to get down some fully-fleshed thoughts on tech that would've otherwise been left half-formulated and lost in a comment section.
There's something about the process of writing a standalone article that forces you to frame your ideas properly and push them towards conclusions.
Not addressed at you, particularly, but this is why a Twitter subscription plan has legs. The most value out of a twitter feed comes from curation and getting information from domain experts and trained/seasoned reporters. There are more than enough people with opinions.
I highly encourage newsletter authors to avoid the trap of just selling their opinion or meta-analysis, and do original reporting and research. Trying to focus on a niche where one is an expert, too. Those seem most successful and capable getting a sustainable number of subscriptions.
Thanks for the general advice even if not aimed at me - you're right. I need to bring original research as well as opinion. I've been looking into what I can glean about social trends from open source intelligence methods. Early days but interesting.
I submitted my first article once and mentioned it a comment once here, which is about as much self-promotion as i'm comfortable with, and received 5 sign ups.
It's a strange feeling that people want to hear more from me in their inboxes! I was only moaning about the news, really.
Ever since getting an @hey.com email address I've found myself subscribing more and more to newsletter. I guess I could have done the same thing with gmail and filters, but getting newsletters as part of The Feed and out of my Inbox has made me really enjoy weekly newsletters compared to before.
I did this a while back. There are a number of really awesome services now that give you a one-off email address solely for signing up for newsletters, and an in-app reading experience that is markedly better.
I've used Stoop [1] for the better part of two years now, and it's a great product with a great model.
I'm working on using Feedbin instead so that I can get my newsletter emails in Reeder, which I use for reading RSS feeds. That's my main news source, really.
Feedly also provides a lot of this functionality in their Pro+ plan, but they go way above and beyond my needs at a higher price.
Ever since getting back into a newsreader (NetNewsWire on my iPad) I've been unsubscribing from newsletters. The nice thing about RSS is the granularity. Each article is typically it's own entry.
If you want a similar experience without the 37signals orthodoxy and the invasion of privacy (they read every single one of your emails in order to block pixel trackers). Then I'd suggest something like Stoop (https://stoopinbox.com/).
To be honest, it makes absolute sense for journalists to do this. Decentralisation is happening in multiple fields (e.g crypto). Why not apply this to journalism too - bringing the customer what they want, directly to their inbox. No filler, no compromise.
Additionally, it means journalists have a different way to monetise their time.
https://patreon.com is available for direct patronage.
Additionally https://hecto.io is a newsletter ads marketplace, help journalists monetise their free newsletters.
It makes so much sense and can only see the trend getting bigger.
Thanks, while I don't really like or identify with overly-reductive terms like "left" or "right", I am aware of a "left"-ward bias in my information consumption, and I'd like to see some alternative takes. I'll check this out.
But it looks so totally predictable. It's not really possible to subscribe to all the good ones, so we 'll need an aggregator. Congrats, we are about to reinvent RSS. But if we call it UXLRBAT nobody will find out.
Me too. In fact i think we regressed, and we 'll look back to our oversaturated social media decade with disbelief. UXLRBAT will be nothing like it.
Side note, i think this total centralization business has a LOT to do with the dominance of mobile. There is an uptick of PC sales which is being accelerated by COVID, and people are already talking about going back to running their own services/blogs/whatever. I'll be glad to see the battery-dependent cloud overlords stepping back a little.
Anyone know how the newsletter mentioned in the article, Heated, has a custom domain[0] on substack? As far as I know substack doesn't allow you to use a custom domain[1].
The homepage of https://thedispatch.com/ also is a custom domain. Although clicking on a few stories seems to take you into individual newsletter domains hosted by Substack.
After the AppStore launched the app prices underwent serious compression over time, but a decade later the prices have decompressed and inflated way past the starting point - turns out there were enough people willing to pay for the privilege of using quality goods (codes).
I wonder if news reporting will go through a similar rebound? We've always complained that news don't have a way to pay for themselves, but maybe now there is...
This is actually a very interesting point that I've come across on a few different platforms recently (Patreon, for example, [also targets their homepage to creators, not consumers](https://www.patreon.com/)). I wonder if Substack just doesn't want to deal with opening the door to some newsletters getting "free promotion" by being features on their homepage? Nonetheless, I'd love to see "trending" or "editors picks" or something.
Probably like Patreon, they expect that creators are bringing an existing fan community with them. I've never discovered creators through Patreon, but I've found countless creators elsewhere and then looked at their Patreon page to see what they were working on/funding. As an email newsletter service, this is particularly typical.
That said, these are some pretty neat newsletters so now I do find myself wanting to discover more of them. I see an opportunity for something like one of those "Awesome list" Github repos that lists neat Substack newsletters people have found. And honestly that kind of feels more "wholesome" to me than official curation since it's communicating one person's taste (or a curated group's taste) rather than introducing potential incentives for newsletter writers to try to game some system for publicity. This seems like a good start. ;)
Homepage should be indicative and easy to navigate. For example in online advertising industry you are presented with "Publishers" and "Advertisers" in content creation industry homepage should show for example "Content Creators" and "Consumers" or "Publishers" and "Readers".
I also think Substack's UI and UX should be much better and also their search feature is rather primitive, search always should be robust in this kind of businesses.
What does a news organization bring to the table? resources to pay for your time? resources to aid your investigation? Reputation that helps your written word to reach an audience?
Maybe people traditionally thought: all those things. But this trend certainly seems to question the value of what large news orgs bring to the table.
But does the newspaper format specifically add anything to this transaction? Magazines are slower but higher-quality in virtually every way (and I like that magazines are dedicated to a particular topic rather than subscribing to a wide set of topics some of which you might not care about), while the internet (particularly email newsletters) is faster and better-suited for disposable daily updates.
The internet also provides the opportunity for some remarkable interactive journalism (I know a guy who's done some of this for the WSJ) which is impossible to replicate on paper and can sometimes convey the story better than pure print can.
So does daily wood pulp still have a place in our media diet? I'm curious to hear arguments for what purpose it still fills.
Any obvious idea is done on the Internet ..... can you direct me to where this is already implemented?
I have no doubt someone will start aggregating newsletters into summary pages featuring latest posts, with navigation by topic. And if they do that then no doubt they will also seek advertising revenue.
My reply was to your original meme-comment before you edited it into something else. It is disingenuous for you to request a clarification to your new edited comment. Shame in you.
Independent content is great, but part of me wonders if this will create even more siloing now that everyone only pays for the voices of one or two people?
It allows me to directly support writers I like and it allows them to write high quality long form content on their own schedule without the corrupting influence of ads.
They can be more independently minded.
Paying for the NYT I support writers I think are great, but also writers I think are terrible (that Taylor Lorenz spat recently), also policy I think is wrong (pushing to publish Scott Alexander’s last name). Most of the tech reporting is similarly bad. I also get ads and I’m forced to call to cancel.
Vox produces some great stuff, but also recode and that no handshakes article mocking Silicon Valley for taking the pandemic seriously. I don’t want to support those writers.
It’s nice to support writers individually and directly.
Maybe Steven Levy or Li Yuan will do newsletters too.
The next step is making it easy for them to own their own platform under their own domain and not on medium or substack.