Midweek Update: Substack, One Year Later

On Monday, media conglomerate Penske Media Corp became the largest stakeholder in Vox Media. That means Penske, which owns Variety, Rolling Stone, WWD, Deadline Hollywood, Billboard, and Indiewire among its 20 print and digital brands, now has the largest stake in Vox, which includes six major media brands as well as New York Magazine. The incentive for growth among investors is obvious, and so these companies have no choice but to consume each other despite that growth not really helping employees (two weeks ago Vox cut 7% of its workforce). But even these media titans, in an online world, are at the mercy of tech giants like Google and Facebook. There’s not a lot of room for competition when the remaining ad dollars are scarce. Facebook was lying when it pushed a pivot-to-video, but media companies that depended on Facebook for traffic had little choice but to dance to Facebook’s tune.

This model built on ad dollars has ultimately led to big fish eating little ones since little sites can’t compete and media corporations need large portfolios where they running massive operations to crank out as many articles as possible in order to increase revenue. From my vantage point, it doesn’t seem particularly sustainable and it means these media sites have their fates wrapped up in whatever Google and Facebook decide to do with their algorithms.

I feel like subscription models are the only way forward to support quality writing untethered to the demands of traffic numbers. After one year of using Substack, it’s not like I’ve blown up (there has been modest growth!), but being here is basically my vote of confidence in the business model. I don’t think Commentary Track will be a world-beater (again, this isn’t my day job; it’s a side project), but something like Dave Chen’s Decoding Everything feels like it’s the future—smart, dedicated people producing a steady stream of insightful editorial content across various mediums.

We grew up on an Internet where everything was “free” because publishers didn’t fully understand the value of digital, couldn’t instantly switch over from print to a new medium, and there had been an equilibrium (of sorts) between subscription dollars and ad dollars in print. Digital went full-on for ads because the assumption was that if you didn’t give away your product, someone else would. But now we’ve simply landed on ad dollars either leading to sites trying to game the Google algorithm as best they can regardless of the quality of the writing or jeopardizing the editorial side to be more favorable to advertisers.

That’s why I think Substack, at least for the time being, is the way to go. All readers will have to decide which publications are the most important to them, but at least the readers can support publications directly. If a Substack goes from quality, thoughtful writers to AI-generated word salad to hit SEO (search engine optimization) targets, you can pull your subscription. It gives both readers and writers a greater say in the publication rather than paying a freelancer next-to-nothing to generate hate clicks.

I don’t know what the future holds for PMC and Vox, but I’m skeptical. I have friends who work for these companies (specifically, they write for sites owned by these companies), so I want them to succeed so that my friends can keep creating excellent journalism. But for my part, I’m going to keep turning out Substacks, not because I think it will be financially beneficial to me personally, but perhaps to others that make a concerted effort to build an online media ecosystem better than the one we’ve got.

What I’m Watching

I’m making a concerted effort to watch more Black cinema for Black history month, but I’ll also admit I’m jumping around a lot. For more thoughtful programming, I’d go with Maya Cade’s Black Film Archive recommendation, which are 28 films that focus on resistance and the struggle for social justice. For me, I’m making my way through Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films and then I’ll probably check out/revisit films from early in Spike Lee’s career like School Daze, Do the Right Thing, Mo’ Better Blues, and Malcolm X.

What I’m Reading

I started in Go Tell It on the Mountain, and to the surprise of no one, the James Baldwin novel is very thoughtful, emotional, and heavy. It’s not a long read, but every sentence feels weighted down with Baldwin’s internal conflicts and frustrations. That being said, the sentences themselves are still artfully composed and he loses none of the beauty of his prose in dealing with his identity as a Black gay man who no longer wants to be part of Christianity.

Substack Recommendation

I have to promote Judd Legum’s Popular Information. He’s working to establish independent journalism free from corporate influence, and that’s not an easy task. But he’s kept at it since 2018, and it’s worth checking out as he’s kept on stories that larger organizations have glossed over. For example, he’s banging the drum about Florida’s book banning bills and how the state government is trying to obfuscate this chilling practice.

What I’m Hearing

I’m currently making my way through You Must Remember This’ season on The Blacklist, and just finished the episode on Elia Kazan, which I think is one of the best episodes I’ve heard so far. Showrunner/narrator Karina Longworth has no trouble bringing heat against a controversial figure like Kazan, but she also has insights into his work and legacy that paint a fascinating portrait. If you’ve never listened to the show, I’d recommend giving this episode a listen.

What I’m Playing

I thought I could finish God of War: Ragnarok before Hogwarts Legacy came out, and I was wrong! So now I’m playing both.