Casey newton verge8/25/2023 Recently she wrote an essay about her love for sitcom pizza deliveries. "It's something you can't really pitch to a site that's looking to get a lot of clicks through an algorithm," Fitzgerald said. Her writing can be strange and messy, she said, and not as timely as it would have to be to grab attention on social media. "The one-sentence pitch I have for it is that it's like long, weird essays about love," she said. She says her primary source of income now comes from writing her Substack newsletter "Griefbacon," which offers a mix of paid-for and free posts, a common Substack strategy. His message hit home for Helena Fitzgerald, a New York freelance writer. And we're stuck in this mode where everybody is sort of chasing engagement," Best said. And we now live in a world where social media has kind of grabbed all of our attention. Facebook and Google took over the advertising industry. Investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Y Combinator are making big bets that the company's email-newsletter model will take flight, in part by placing inboxes above algorithm-driven news feeds. Substack's rise has been helped along by more than the proverbial plumbing pipes. "And we're providing the plumbing that makes that happen." "You're subscribing directly to a writer," Best said. But the rest of what readers pay goes directly to the writer.īest used to work at the messaging app Kik, which is where he met Jairaj Sethi and Hamish McKenzie. Credit-card processor Stripe takes another 3%. In exchange, Substack pockets a 10% cut of a writer's earnings from subscriptions. And, unlike some of its competitors, Substack emphasizes the freedom it gives writers, letting them own their content and their subscription lists, so they can leave the platform at any time and take their subscribers with them. But Best said Substack is different for two reasons: It has developed a way for independent writers to make money - that is, as long as they convert readers into paid subscribers. The format's resurgence has been documented in past years. Social media 'breaks everything,' says Substack co-founderĮmail newsletters are far from new. "The way to fix that is to have a better business model where that's not true." "The platforms we're spending all our time on incentivize that stuff and make that stuff easy and give it fuel," he said. Substack co-founder Chris Best said journalists are flocking to the platform after becoming exhausted by the constant pressure of landing the next viral hit on Facebook or Twitter. Newton joins legions of other journalists who have ditched staff gigs at established publications like Rolling Stone, The New Republic, New York Magazine, BuzzFeed and Vox to join what has been dubbed the "Substackerati." "All I have to do is find a few thousand people who will pay me $10 a month or $100 a year and I'll have one of the best jobs in journalism," Newton said. It offered him the added perks of a health-care subsidy and access to a legal defense fund. Substack provided Newton a website and slick email tools. "That just seems like a really fun game to play." All you have to do is do good work and attract customers," Newton said. "All of a sudden this thing comes along where it's like, imagine never having to ask your boss for a raise again. This fall, he quit his steady job at The Verge to start an email newsletter with Substack, a San Francisco-based startup. Known for a mix of original reporting and gimlet-eyed analysis, his writing has become essential reading for those who want to better understand the industry. San Francisco-based Hamish McKenzie, Chris Best and Jairaj Sethi are the co-founders of the email newsletter platform Substack, which has seen its active writers more than double since the start of the pandemic.Īs a tech journalist for the website The Verge, Casey Newton established himself as something of a Silicon Valley institution.
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