{"id":61650,"date":"2020-11-21T05:00:26","date_gmt":"2020-11-21T10:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=61650"},"modified":"2020-11-20T14:00:22","modified_gmt":"2020-11-20T19:00:22","slug":"ah-and-so-it-begins-the-problematization-of-substack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2020\/11\/21\/ah-and-so-it-begins-the-problematization-of-substack\/","title":{"rendered":"“Ah, and so it begins. The problematization of Substack”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writing — appropriately — on Substack, Jen Gerson<\/a> outlines her transition from full-time journalist to journalist-subsisting-on-the-crumbs-of-direct-reader-support at The Line<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

True story: an ambitious young man with an idea for a startup gave me a ring on the phone. He wanted to start a new platform for writers and journalists; what would it take to encourage a writer like me to abandon the mainstream media and go fully independent? I explained the sort of site that might entice me \u2014 a clean and painless user interface, basic word processor, and something to take care of IT and payment back end. I then hung up the phone and thought to myself: “Nice guy. Too bad that idea isn’t going anywhere.” <\/p>\n

After all, why would I abandon paying gigs in mainstream journalism for the uncertainty of direct reader support? It was a crazy idea. <\/p>\n

Years passed.<\/p>\n

Well, this gentleman went off to form a company called, uh, Substack, and after Andrew Sullivan left New York Magazine<\/em> to reconstitute the Daily Dish<\/em> under the aegis on this very platform, I was forced to dredge up this gentleman’s email and offer to eat my hat. <\/p>\n

Because by then, mainstream media was in a state of financial and moral disarray and it was time for me to do what I would have done three years earlier if I had possessed the foresight \u2014 start The Line<\/em>. In any case, the founder of Substack was very kind and even managed to schedule a call with me, at which point I said: “OK, you were right.” <\/p>\n

This was one of the conversations that eventually led to my co-founding this fine newsletter that you are reading now, but in the course of this chat I had to ask another question: “You know they’re going to come after you, right? Are you ready for that?”<\/p>\n

He said Substack is, indeed, committed to serving its community of writers \u2014 provided they aren’t spreading hate or disinformation, of course \u2014 but I suspect the company is only beginning to gain a glimpse of the test ahead.<\/p>\n

When I read the Columbia Journalism Review<\/em>‘s piece “The Substackerati<\/a>“, released this week, my first response was: “Ah, and so it begins. The problematization of Substack.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writing — appropriately — on Substack, Jen Gerson outlines her transition from full-time journalist to journalist-subsisting-on-the-crumbs-of-direct-reader-support at The Line: True story: an ambitious young man with an idea for a startup gave me a ring on the phone. He wanted to start a new platform for writers and journalists; what would it take to encourage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,53],"tags":[204,459,58],"class_list":["post-61650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","tag-blogging","tag-censorship","tag-internet"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-g2m","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61652,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61650\/revisions\/61652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}