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. Along with the revenue the Laverys will bring in, the move is good media politics for the company.