Zack Polanski speaks to William Dalrymple. Credit: Bold Politics
When Substack color launched, nine years ago, working journalists thought this new platform might manage the unthinkable: make their profession economically sustainable. That hasn’t happened. Last week, one of Substack’s most successful journalists, Taylor Lorenz, disclosed on Substack Notes (the platform’s micro-blogging stream) that her paid subscriptions had “fallen off a cliff” — even while her follower count was “skyrocketing”. Lorenz has some 200,000 followers, an order of magnitude more than probably 99% of the other writers on Substack, and more internet fame than probably 99.9% percent of us. And yet, on the most basic metric of Substack success, she’s failing.
Back in 2017, Substack solved a particular problem for a particular type of journalist at a particular time. We were a few years into Black Lives Matter, and, of course, the first year of Trump’s first term. The Great Awokening was well underway, and over the next few years, culminating in the summer of 2020, the media industry would come to resemble a grumpy religious sect, with its theological dogma and mechanisms for punishing dissent. It became a suffocating place for anyone who wanted to think the least bit freely.