February 18, 2025

Why We’re Freaking Out About Substack

But Ghost represents an even purer departure from legacy media. More than half of the sites on the platform simply run the software off their own servers.

“The technology is designed to be decentralized, and there’s no one institution or one corporation that can decide what is OK,” he said.

Ghost isn’t the only alternative, of course. Twitter recently bought the newsletter platform Revue, and Facebook is developing ambitious plans for a rival that will provide a platform for local journalists, among other writers. The left-wing commentary site Discourse Blog moved to a rival platform called Lede. Others, like the tech analyst Ben Thompson, cobble together email, blogging and payment services to be what he calls “sovereign writers.”

Substack and its backers are alert to the risk that the service could be replaced by someone charging a few dollars a month. But they note that many writers simply don’t want to be bothered with anything other than writing, and happily pay the premium for that. (“I don’t have time to sit around trying to figure out platforms,” Ms. Gay said.) Substack is also racing to add elements of centralized support, like helping readers with their lost passwords and limited legal and editing help. And communities of writers on the same platform may gain subscribers through cross-promotion. Mr. Sullivan, who said he saw Substack as his tech platform, not his publisher, has begun deliberately promoting smaller writers in an “In the Stacks” section and said he was interested in figuring out how to bundle subscriptions.

This week, eight writers who cover tech, media and culture — Mr. Warzel, Mr. Newton, Anne Helen Petersen, Nick Quah, Eric Newcomer, Delia Cai, Ryan Broderick and Kim Zetter — are starting a “virtual newsroom” called Sidechannel on Discord, a platform for text and voice conversations, Mr. Newton said. The Discord server will be open to a subscriber to any of their publications.

It’s unclear if this kind of bundling will ultimately make Substack stronger — or make it dispensable. One of the group, Mr. Quah, does not use Substack, and Mr. Newton said, “We all think of this as a vehicle for us to build our independent businesses, rather than as an extension of Substack itself.”

One of Substack’s co-founders, Hamish McKenzie, told me in an interview from Wellington, New Zealand, that he welcomed the competition on technical features because he thinks Substack will distinguish itself on “the human stuff.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/11/business/media/substack-newsletter-competition.html

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