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Substack's Secret
"Substack's One Weird Marketing Trick was leveraging the economic interests of traditional media employees against their publishers to get positive "earned media"."
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When people trust humans more than brands: the incubator newsroom
How we might rebuild journalism from the ground up by rethinking what a newsroom is.
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The Substack Election
[Lauren Egan at The Bulwark] If I was Substack, this is exactly what I'd be doing. But then again, if I was Substack, I wouldn't have paid Nazis to post on my network. "The company sees an opportunity. Its employees have been meeting with congressional
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Building our "native-AI newsroom"
[Henry Blodget] Henry Blodget, former co-founder of Business Insider, has started a new, "AI-native" newsroom. It's not, in my opinion, a positive use of AI, but it does indicate how some people are thinking about using the technology. This apparently includes harassing your newly-created virtual employees:
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After leaving Substack, writers are making more money elsewhere
[Alexander Lee at Digiday] Substack isn't the best deal in town for independent journalists: "A year after leaving Substack in early 2024, newsletter writers are making more money peddling their words on other platforms. [...] Since leaving Substack, some writers’ subscriber counts have plateaued over the past year,
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What was Quartz?
[Zach Seward] I first met Zach Seward when he was running Quartz, the news startup with the quippy haiku notifications that had, at the time, captured a lot of the media world's attention. It was really good. This piece, by Zach, is written on the heels of the
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ProPublica wanted to find more sources in the federal government. So it brought a truck.
[Nell Dhanesha at Nieman Journalism Lab] This was fun to watch unfold in real time: "The truck’s journey to that spot had begun a few days earlier, as an email with the subject line “guerilla marketing for sources” in the inbox of Ariana Tobin, editor of ProPublica’s
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Wired is dropping paywalls for FOIA-based reporting. Others should follow
[Freedom of the Press Foundation] Wired is going to stop paywalling articles that are primarily based on public records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. This approach makes a ton of sense: "They’re called public records for a reason, after all. And access to public documents is
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Why Techdirt Is Now A Democracy Blog (Whether We Like It Or Not)
[Mike Masnick at Techdirt] Mike Masnick on why tech journalism has a huge part to play in decoding current events right now: "We’ve spent decades documenting how technology and entrepreneurship can either strengthen or undermine democratic institutions. We understand the dangers of concentrated power in the digital age.
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Ex-Washington Post editor Marty Baron rebukes Bezos: ‘betrayal of free expression’
[Anna Betts in The Guardian] He's not wrong: "Marty Baron, a highly regarded former editor of the Washington Post, has said that Jeff Bezos’s announcement that the newspaper’s opinion section would narrow its editorial focus was a “betrayal of the very idea of free expression”
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Washington Post opinion chief quits as Bezos makes new editorial demands
[Brad Reed at RawStory] This is incredibly disappointing to see: "David Shipley, who has spent the last two-and-a-half years running the Washington Post's editorial page, has stepped down from his position over new demands being made by Post owner Jeff Bezos. In a letter sent out to
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America Needs a Working-Class Media
[Alissa Quart in Columbia Journalism Review] This article cuts right to the core of why media is failing to connect with mass audiences in America. It doesn't report from a perspective that they can identify with - largely because it doesn't hire people like them. What