Hacker News Reader

Comment by ok_coo | Hacker News Reader

Independent journalists have been moving to Substack. I subscribed to one, for about a year, who charged like $5/month.

I felt that it was good value, this particular solo journalist did a ton of investigative research and posted almost every day.

So, I think there's a business model for it if you can get enough subs to sustain yourself.

View on HN

On the surface, 5 USD per month sounds cheap, but that is 60 USD per year. Way more expensive that most /average/ monthly news magazines. One of the ways that traditional magazines kept their subscription costs incredibly cheap was huge advertising revenue. Thus, I would like to see Substack introduce /limited/ and /focused/ advertising options for readers and writers alike. Example: Imagine if you enable some ads, then get a discount on the subscription. It could be a worthy experiment.

Example: Vogue magazine (US) is incredibly expensive to produce (photograph, report, layout, print, deliver), but the annual subscription price is only 40 USD. How is that possible? (The September issue is legendary each year and weighs just shy of a metric tonne!) Every major fashion brand has huge multiple page inserts in each issue. (I guess half of each issue is just fashion ads -- but artfully done!)

Usually substack is just reposting news with your opinion... it is editorial in nature not journalism.

Substack is essentially blogging, isn't it? So I don't understand your saying "usually" here. It's 100% dependent on the person writing it.

Yes, but a lot of people think it is news / journalism, and it is being heralded as that. In fact there is a good argument to be made it hurts news because it is purely editorial and summaries. It currently doesn't have many examples of empowering people to do real journalism / investigations.

I'm not sure exactly where the line between "news" and "editorial" is being drawn. If you have journalists from WaPo in DC writing articles on something happening in Israel, what is the difference between them and a respected journalist writing on Substack? If it's someone with a good reputation, I'd probably attribute a bit more weight to the Substack author's analysis on the situation.

Obviously there's space for investigative journalism like what, e.g. ProPublica is doing, but if it's just "news", I'd rather get it from an individual backed by a strong reputation than an institution backed by a strong reputation, unless the journalist has a useful on-the-ground insight.

Yep it is a really important distinction.

News/Jouralism = Reporting with as little opinion as possible. I.E. what/why/how/where/etc from boots on the ground...

Editorial / Substack = Opinion pieces.

ProPublica is amazing in terms of doing journalism and funding it in a new way.

To be fair, I was responding in the context of "traditional" American news outlets failing to actually provide what you're defining as "News/Journalism".

I agree with your definitions. But if I'm choosing between Editorial "news" from WaPo/NYT vs. someone independently covering the same events on their Substack, I'd be more interested in the individual on Substack if I trust them from previous experience as an intelligent, informed, good-faith writer.

WaPo/NYT I don't know the individual writers very well, and I don't really have much faith in the intentions of the editorial board...

Agreed, but I think a lot of that is around money, and their inability to be able to fund as much news/journalism. Plus, hard to turn down stupid money like Fox News who is making bank with near 100% propaganda 24/7.

Ya, but you have to remember Substack has no fact checkers, no standards, no peer review... NYT/WAPO are not perfect, but they have those in place. And, such as in the case of the podcast earlier this year they eventually get to the right place and fire the team that blatantly lied.

Reuters is probably a good source if you are looking for pure news, or apnews.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com