Substack’s idealogy by Nathan Baschez in Every:

“The history of modern publishing (can be traced) back to the decision in 1833 of a guy named Benjamin Day to offer his newspaper, The New York Sun, for a sixth the price of his competition.

His strategy was to focus on sensational journalism to get broad reach, and make up for the losses in subscription revenue through advertising.

That model has dominated media to this day, except it’s now broken, because Facebook and Google and Craigslist took all the advertising revenue.

The answer is to build a new ecosystem where individual writers or small teams offer hyper-focused subscription products that add genuine value to readers' lives, rather than merely trying to trick them into clicking.”

What a novel idea. News media that adds value instead of tricking people.

“We believe that journalistic content has intrinsic value and that it doesn’t have to be given away for free. We believe that what you read matters. And we believe that there has never been a better time to bolster and protect those ideals. Now, more than ever, publishers of news and similar content can be profitable through direct payments from readers. In fact, we are so convinced by this notion that we have started a company to accelerate the advent of what we are convinced will be a new golden age for publishing. The company is called Substack.”