How Substack is giving independent journalists a platform and a way to monetise their work
When journalists focus on niche beats and don’t compete with the attention economy, the industry wins, says Substack’s McKenzie.
Takeaways
Substack wants to build an alternative media economy that helps journalists focus on retaining their own autonomy and not rely on ads for revenue, McKenzie says.
Attention economy fuelled by social media is affecting publishing and reading habits.
When journalists focus on their niche beat and don’t compete with the attention economy fuelled by Google and Facebook, quality of work improves.
Substack has a legal fund to help writers reporting on sensitive topics. They’re keen to expand this to Asia as well and currently it is in its pilot stage in the United States.
With their own emails, mailing lists and subscribers, writers can always stay connected to their readers.
Context
Hit by the pandemic and an unsustainable media ecosystem, thousands of journalists worldwide have either quit their jobs or faced mass layoffs in recent months. Many of them have switched to building their own micro media ecosystems on Substack by focusing on a niche beat and integrating emails + mailing lists + paying subscribers on the platform.
On Splice Beta Online, Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie highlighted his own journey transitioning from a freelance journalist and tech writer to finally co-founding a platform that focuses on writers and places them at the centre of its business model.
Hamish’s journey
39-year-old McKenzie worked as a journalist in New Zealand, Hong Kong before eventually moving to the United States to pursue his career as a freelance journalist and worked with tech news website PandoDaily.
He wrote the book “Insane Mode: How Elon Musk’s Tesla sparked an electric revolution to end the age of oil” in 2017, worked with messaging platform Kik Interactive before teaming up with Chris Best for Substack.
Initially Hamish was unsure of getting into startup mode with Substack as he had profiled entrepreneurs for PandoDaily and understood the emotional toll. However, this particular idea of helping writers convinced him to foray into the platform.
Currently part of the trio of founders, McKenzie says his job is “spreading the Substack religion and helping writers succeed on the platform”.
McKenzie’s tips to writers
Own a beat and develop a niche. Cultivating specific skill sets and areas of focus is an advantage instead of going for broader subjects on Substack.
Becoming a domain expert will benefit writer’s on a model like Substack. Writers are not looking for the world’s largest audience but only those hungry for good coverage of an area that is starved of good coverage.
Focus on your beat and stay consistent and put in continuous hard work in building a media business.
You are building a media business and it is not supposed to be easy so put in time and effort to stay consistent.
Legal fund
“Important investigative sensitive work needs defending and we don’t want people with money and social power to intimidate independent writers who are doing their work.”
Substack has a legal fund to help independent writers and journalists stand up to legal threats and intimidation or defamation cases. Writers can apply to be part of the program on a story-by-story basis and get their stories vetted by lawyers.
McKenzie says this program was helpful to Substack’s business as it helped writers.
Wants to expand to Asia as well but currently focused on the U.S. in the pilot stage.