Comment by blakesterz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blakesterz | Hacker News Reader

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> Why would I pay for dull news wire stuff from the mainstream media when I can get fantastic, expert, lengthy, niche content on stuff I care about via newsletters?

I'll just tell you why I won't pay for this, but would pay for something like the NY Times or my local newspaper. I care to know what's going on, in general. I'm not a new junky, but I read headlines from a bunch of different places, and sometimes the entire article. Paying for a place with original reporting on a bunch of different topics appeals to me. What's that old saying, a mile wide and an inch deep? That works for me.

Paying to read one person write about one topic... not so much. I already get a bunch of free newsletters from a bunch of different people on a bunch of different platforms. Someone would have to be REALLY special for me to pay to read their emails. I can't imagine there's more than one person like that.

That's just me, of course, there's probably enough people out there that are willing to pay for a bunch of special emails to keep substack going.

Yup. Substack writers may know their niche very well but they're only going to write about what interests them. This could be a boon to things like industry media that displaces trade magazines but I can't see how they could possibly replace boots on the ground journalism thar only comes from professional newsrooms.

I'd be inclined to agree if traditional newsrooms weren't dumping their boots on the ground journalism as fast as possible. The worst thing websites like Buzzfeed did was to tell the old guard that this was an unnecessary cost center.

This is why I get my general news from the likes of Reuters and Associated Press. I've found that these have more facts and much less opinion.

Then, when I want someone's take on something, from someone I trust, I get it from substack. Eg. Matthew Yglesias on policy, Noah Smith on finance/economics, etc.

In contrast, most big newspapers seem to me to be pushing opinion masked as fact. They never actually lie, but they are selective in what they represent and imply connections where there are none.

Local media is suffering but substack isn't solving that. Axios is actually trying interestingly enough.

I still read NY Times as my default. They have a lot more soft news than they used to but their reporting is still top notch. They've taken a turn for being more direct in their language and not tap-dancing around political double-speak but I think it's appropriate. My other go-to is NPR and local NPR affiliates.

I agree with the gist of your comment but I do think that the individual efforts of those on substack (and future, similar types of pages) will eventually find that most of them will need to band together to form small networks in order to keep paying subscribers at a reasonable level--this may partially mitigate the problem you're citing by kind of re-creating online magazines / newspapers. At first, this will just be combining a number of opinion pages, but I could imagine a future where these groups can hire staff and expand into the massive hole that traditional news media has left behind with reporting.

The huge players (Sullivan, Taibbi, Greenwald, etc) may be able to continue on their own, but I just don't think there will be enough revenue for every journalist to make a good living with a personal substack.

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