A debate rages in the media world about the trend of writers with substantial online followings moving away from writing for traditional publications and simply going to the website Substack, where writers sell content directly to their readers, untethered from any editorial constraint. (It’s like a less titillating version of OnlyFans.) Substack has a number of investors, including the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
Matt Taibbi, best-known to Americans for his writing for Rolling Stone, responded on Substack (3/1/21) to criticism of Substack from UCLA professor Sarah Roberts (Twitter, 2/28/21). Here’s the short version of the back-and-forth: Roberts believes journalism requires the vast world of factcheckers, editors and institutional discipline for good reporters to produce good journalism. Taibbi’s response—which many FAIR.org readers may agree with—is that Substack is needed because “traditional news outlets have become tools of the very corporate and political interests they’re supposed to be overseeing,” meaning the establishment press has ceased to be a check on power, but instead is a public relations tool of government and business.
For younger audiences, Taibbi’s argument might sound revolutionary. But this was also the mantra of bloggers in the 2000s who, with the growing ubiquity of internet connections, saw blogging as a way to get the narrow editorial standards often used to keep the gates closed to ideas and journalism that challenge the status quo. There was a growing need for new outlets in the United States at the time, because many newspapers, with the notable exception of Knight Ridder (later acquired by McClatchy), had joined in the Bush administration’s full-court press for the Iraq War (FAIR.org, 3/19/07; National Interest, 6/15/18). Blogging had a sort of anarchic allure that the staid publishing world lacked, but the culture didn’t last, in part because it’s hard to monetize, but also because much of that energy moved to emerging social media networks (Guardian, 7/16/14).
Likewise, legal and extra-legal alternative broadcasters defied corporate and government consolidation of radio in the 1970s, as profiled in Jesse Walker’s book Rebels on the Air. Before that, the 1960s saw an explosion in the New Left press. Substack is hardly a new form of media rebellion, but rather it has made it easier for writers to independently make money from their work.
This might work out for some writers, but individuals on Substack can hardly recreate the institutional power needed to create a fully functioning newsroom; will Substack audiences also start paying the salaries of needed behind-the-scenes staff, like researchers, producers and translators? The medium is a great way for pundits who can’t find a home for their columns to get their words out there, but today’s journalism isn’t short on hot takes; its problem is a dearth of full-time foreign correspondents and long-term investigative units.
A few examples: The problem with McClatchy—which won a Polk Award for its excellent coverage of the Syrian conflict (McClatchy, 2/17/13) — isn’t that it doesn’t have enough pundits to challenge Washington foreign policy, the problem is that it closed its foreign bureaus (Poynter, 10/12/15). The Indianapolis Star and the Boston Globe were only able to uncover wide-spread national sex abuse scandals because the papers could provide staff and monetary resources to in-depth investigations (stories that are told in the movies Athlete A and Spotlight).
While the number of traditional state government reporters declined last decade (NPR, 7/10/14), there has been an uptick in start-up, online publications devoted to the beat to cover that hole (Governing, 3/1/15). Layoffs at the New York Daily News (FAIR.org, 7/26/18) and the closure of the Village Voice have impoverished New York City’s once robust news environment. Newer entities like The City, and Gothamist’s merger with NPR affiliate WNYC, have helped far more than those individual writers going to Substack.
In fact, Taibbi, perhaps accidentally, acknowledged this when he asked, “Why did a source like former NSA contractor Edward Snowden choose to come forward to Glenn Greenwald in particular?” He added that Snowden “wasn’t bothered by the fact that Glenn didn’t come up through the ranks of a paper like the New York Times or Washington Post.”
Greenwald, at the time of the Snowden scoop, however, wasn’t a lone gunman, but a columnist for the Guardian, and had that paper’s resources, including the support of other journalists (like now-retired correspondent Ewan MacAskill), to advance such a big investigation. Incidentally, the New Yorker (9/3/18) noted that “Snowden began to talk with Laura Poitras, and then with the [Washington Post] journalist Barton Gellman,” and then “Greenwald and Snowden finally started an encrypted conversation.” Additionally, the Guardian (8/23/13) shared access to some of the leaked documents with the New York Times to protect the information from the British government.
Greenwald went on to co-found the Intercept, published by First Look, which, rightfully, committed resources to hiring full-time journalists and researchers to do what Taibbi says he wants: more aggressive and adversarial investigations of powerful institutions. New York (2/24/21) explained how such a project requires the work of a massive institution:
Keeping a trove as sensitive as the Snowden archive required substantial security measures: First Look even spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a dedicated secure room, similar to what federal officials use to review classified information.
And the exception there proves the rule, too. The biggest shame of the Intercept is that it allowed the identity of a government source, Reality Winner, to become exposed, and she is now in jail. This terrible case isn’t a folly of too many factcheckers and onerous editorial oversight, but a failure of not enough institutional rigor to safeguard an investigation (New York Times, 9/13/20).
Substack is, and will likely continue to be, an interesting place for essays and commentary that don’t make it to the major op-ed pages, such as Heather Cox Richardson (New York Times, 12/27/20). It has also been a boon for the lost art of the niche newsletter—a hyper-focused publication, such as Nathan Tankus’ Notes on the Crises, focusing on monetary policy (Bloomberg, 7/2/20), or LJ Dawson’s The Des, which covers criminal justice. New York politics journalist Ross Barkan uses Substack, but he saves his best reported stuff for places like Jacobin, or his upcoming book on New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
But Roberts’ fear—and Taibbi’s celebration—of Substack are misplaced. Corporate media certainly need disruption. But it has to happen at scale, not with a few writers here and there on an open microphone.
Thank you for this. I can sum up my own thoughts by rephrasing the title to replace “misplaced” with “overstated.”
You’re getting it half-way wrong. Fear of Substack is not misplaced. The people who fear it have a good reason to. But not for reasons of the future of legitimate journalism. When the context of the last 30 years or more of the U.S. corporate news media is taken into account, Substack should and DOES serve as a warning to the major corporate outlets that they have crossed the line of accountability and believability on foreign policy and holding leaders to account rather than telling lies on their behalf (Judith Miller), burying stories until they are no longer politically inconvenient (the illegal spying story that was held until Bush was safely re-elected), refusing to report on the negative effects of US “interventions” and summarily terminating anyone with views that differ on things like illegal invasions of foreign countries (Phil Donahue). Virtually all of those examples are from nearly 20 years ago and not only did corporate media refuse to serve as a check on our leaders’ worst impulses, but they refused to look inward and reform. Instead they doubled down (Russia! Russia! Russia! – or – Yemen?! What’s that??). Oh by the way, Biden won’t actually be sanctioning MBS despite his promises to do so. But Trump’s out of office, so let’s move on!
Just today your colleague published this piece: https://fair.org/home/humanitarian-imperialism/comment-page-1/#comment-3188549
Which elegantly presents the case that the US corporate media cannot be trusted and that when it comes to the project of justifying or hiding the worst actions of the empire and disguising or minimizing the role that corporations and oligarchs who control the US government ( and own the media itself) play in our foreign policy, journalism is censored or self-censored before a pen is ever put to paper.
Reporters at every single major outlet from the NYT to the LA Times to CNN to CBS to NBC, even to the Guardian know, mostly without being told, what kind of stance to take on these issues if they want their careers to advance.
It’s the Chomsky quote come to life. Severely limit the scope of acceptable topics but encourage lively debate within those ever tightening confines. So why should I care if some NYT reporter’s story about an alleged chemical weapons attack is subjected to a rigorous editing process but fact checking is completely out of the question when it comes to straying outside the carefully managed spectrum of narrative?
To that point, modern corporate media has gone the way of the narrative over the news. Assad = evil. Maduro = dictator. Iran = state sponsor of terror. Russia = Putin = an existential threat to the United States. The USA = the greatest thing to ever happen to the world. How is that journalism and why should I care if it goes away? Furthermore, what about the case of reporters like Donald McNeil who was held up to double jeopardy and forced to resign earlier this year for alleged transgressions he was already investigated and punished for two years ago. So it’s gone way beyond not reporting inconvenient foreign policy news or cheerleading sanctions and military actions. Now, any reporter who strays outside the lines on his/her personal time is subject to virtual lynch mobs or their management who, themselves, know very well what’s “acceptable” and what isn’t. https://reason.com/2021/02/10/nathan-robinson-the-guardian-israel-tweet-joke-column/
Corporate media should see independent media as a threat and let me tell you, they do. Corporate media has allowed itself to be co-opted by the Pentagon, the CIA and arms manufacturers and you will not see a contrary opinion in the round tables on TV or in the pages of the major newspapers. Furthermore, the Silicon Valley giants have now functionally integrated with the Government, especially the Democratic Party and have exercised their vast, unregulated powers by canceling a sitting president and de-platforming anyone that might be guilty of pushing “fake news” (the definition of which will always change).
We need MORE Substacks not less.
Excellent post. Thanks for your comment and the link.
in your camp!
Taibbi could not have said it better:
“traditional news outlets have become tools of the very corporate and political interests they’re supposed to be overseeing,”
Greenwald’s departure from the once promising Intercept provides the perfect example. There is only one plausible explanation for spiking his accurate and newsworthy story on Hunter Biden’s laptop. The Intercept had joined the ranks of ‘resistance’ media in the attempt to defeat Donald Trump. A worthy effort perhaps, but hardly journalism.
Another example is Tareq Haddad’s resignation from Newsweek. From a Scott Ritter piece in the American Conservative;
In an announcement on Twitter, Haddad declared, “I resigned from Newsweek after my attempts to publish newsworthy revelations about the leaked OPCW letterwere refused for no valid reason,” adding, “I have collected evidence of how they [the OPCW] suppressed the story in addition to evidence from another case where info inconvenient to US govt was removed, though it was factually correct.” Haddad further noted that he had been threatened by Newsweek with legal action if he sought to publish his findings elsewhere.
I hold these whistle-blowing journalists in the highest regard, celebrate them if you will. The WikiLeaks model of journalism was a smashing success until the US government’s not-entirely-successful attempt to crush it. Substack is just the latest innovation to circumvent corporate and government censorship. While it has provided a haven for excommunicated journalists, it has also provided me with some excellent reading.
I’m sorry Mr. Paul, your article has not persuaded me that celebration of Substack is misplaced. And I have no fear of the demise of corporate media.
Mike,
Publishing an extensive account of allegations that have no underpinning, that attack 1 candidate’s credibility immediately before an election, with little to no factual basis is commonly referred to as a “hit piece”.
When the Intercept pointed this out, and suggested edits to recognize the issues, Greenwald lost his mind.
I like much of Greenwald’s reporting, but his departure from the Intercept is not cut & dried, as he wants everyone to believe. His basic premise is blown away by a dozen critical Biden pieces that the Intercept’s other writers put in over the previous 9 months of the campaign. To suggest that they had suddenly “become part of the Trump resistance” was a preposterous claim.
“And the exception there proves the rule, too. The biggest shame of the Intercept is that it allowed the identity of a government source, Reality Winner, to become exposed, and she is now in jail.”
No, the biggest shames of the Intercept are that it published the documents Ms Winner leaked since the documents did NOT say what the Intercept “reporting” claimed, and the second big shame is the Intercept’s support for the Sunni extremists trying to overthrow the Syrian government.
Yes, I’m aware of the Greenwald resignation from the Intercept. But the reasons for that aren’t as serious as the 2 things I mention above. Furthermore the particular censoring that drove Greenwald’s decision was censoring of the well established, but legal, corruption of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, and Joe Biden’s brother. So Greenwald didn’t resign over the suppression of new reporting.
A 3rd big shame of the Intercept: It pushed Russiagate BS for years.
A rather complex issue here and one that I find difficult to find a way to adjudicate in a manner that brings about a position acceptable as a correct one. I do care for a the proliferation of legitimate news organization with all that annuities that allow me to believe in their legitimacy. I also know, that because of cost and issues of profitability, such news organization are diminishing in number. Not good at all. I also know that the news has been managed (I mean this in to apply in a number of ways) by corporations and their managers, the result being managed news not the full story. Alternative publications have served an important service but many of these, to finance their operations, have become the children of the adults who manage finances and take the alternatives corporate. So, what to do to finance true alternatives that can survive while employing the people needed, at reasonable salaries, to run the legitimizing mechanisms? Those who have moved to Substack, some at least, probably most, have gone there to escape a kind of control that is not about serving the truth but, rather, the corporations that provide the money to make them the kind of legitimate news organizations spoken of here. I guess it is for me to decide which of the writers taking this path is doing so to have some control over what they report and who amongst them is there because they have been proven to be legitimately out of control.
Going after Substack is just more proof that our tech oligarchs are working hand and hand with our government and their intelligence agencies to silence ALL dissenting views. People need to stop watching CNN, MSDNC and Faux News, and quit reading “newspapers” like WAPO and the NYT because factual reporting no longer exists inside of those organizations. They are stenographers to power – nothing more.
This piece reeks of intellectual dishonesty. It reads like a companion smear to Roberts’ twitter rant, and I’m scratching my head that FAIR has given its imprimatur to this oblique nonsense. It’s making my mind go places like it used to go when the Intercept began to show signs of “coming into the fold.” I really hope the same influences are not being brought to bear on FAIR, or at least that FAIR will not succumb to them.
Taibbi directly addressed Roberts’ “stolen valor” argument, as well as the argument that Substack is ispo facto institutionally incapable of doing real news, and trounced them both. You’d never know that Taibbi spoke to either of these issues after reading this claptrap.
But the more important question is why would a FAIR writer, simply because there is some Silicon Valley money in play, object in the least to an outlet trying to actualize the principle that, as Taibbi says, “audiences will read you or not based upon how careful and accurate you are”, where it is beyond obvious, as other comments on this board have shown, that all of the investigative and traditional journalistic resources in the world will not guarantee that a news outlet will deserve this credibility? Is it not clearly a “both / and”, not an “either / or”, proposition?
This is very disconcerting. I suggest that Mr. Paul look at this again.
Substack is just a platform, and has found success in its particular niche. I don’t think that is bad, but one thing about it I don’t like is how much all these writers charge. How many newsletters can you really afford to throw $60-70 a year at?
To me that is the real trouble. Because for most people it is “none,” and is all the more glaring because a person can get a subscription to a local newspaper, however degraded its coverage has become (but still host to dozens of different writers) for about the same price.
In other words, and to be blunt, Substack smacks of writers simply cashing in on their celebrity who rely on a well-heeled audience to to rake in the bucks. They may cover important topics, but at the prices charge I think it is important to situate those topics amid their author’s apparent priorities.