I think Substack achieves the goal of Patreon for journalism and has demonstrated market demand for high quality independent writing.
They even run a program that started several months ago where they offloaded risk from promising writers for a year by guaranteeing them a minimum pay in exchange for a larger cut of realized platform for the same year. AIUI several writers like Matt Yglesias et al have done well via this program and built audiences that will give them significant windfalls when their risk-mitigation contracts with Substack expire.
I think the agency of the future is just some sort of partnership between several writers on the platform or other similar platforms that allows you to purchase a group subscription to several writers at a small discount. I imagine that writers who are able to sustain such high levels of revenue may also be able to hire editors etc as necessary along with taking on intern writers to write [approved!] guest posts on their streams.
I'm not too familiar with Substack aside from reading a couple "columns" (can't think of a better noun) from there but is there any reason why it wouldn't be a useful platform for journalism, aside from it being so associated with opinion pieces?
> I'm not too familiar with Substack aside from reading a couple "columns" (can't think of a better noun) from there but is there any reason why it wouldn't be a useful platform for journalism, aside from it being so associated with opinion pieces?
Compared to opinionating, actual journalism is more expensive, is more specialized, takes more time, and often elicits less of the strong emotional reactions that drive "engagement."
They even run a program that started several months ago where they offloaded risk from promising writers for a year by guaranteeing them a minimum pay in exchange for a larger cut of realized platform for the same year. AIUI several writers like Matt Yglesias et al have done well via this program and built audiences that will give them significant windfalls when their risk-mitigation contracts with Substack expire.
I think the agency of the future is just some sort of partnership between several writers on the platform or other similar platforms that allows you to purchase a group subscription to several writers at a small discount. I imagine that writers who are able to sustain such high levels of revenue may also be able to hire editors etc as necessary along with taking on intern writers to write [approved!] guest posts on their streams.