Tina Brown has decided that He will only write on Monday afternoons. It’s a pretty revealing detail. The legendary editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker in the 80s and 90s has joined Substack with some disdain. It does not seek to reinvent journalism. He just wants to have fun.

Substack, on the other hand, has other plans. And they are becoming an online phenomenon in themselves.

The new shelter

The platform had been courting Brown for more than a year. His signing is a masterstroke: few names better condense the golden age of paper magazines. It is also the last movement of a strategy that wants to turn the media landscape around.

The figures speak for themselves. On Substack, more than 30 authors in the politics and news categories are generating at least $1 million annually each, it was revealed The New York Times.

The Bulwark invoice 6 million. ZetheusMehdi Hasan’s new medium after his departure from MSNBCis close to 4 million. The total paying subscriber base exceeds 4 million. These are numbers that intimidate many traditional media.

Of course, the timing It is not coincidental. The journalism crisis is chronic, newsrooms continue to decline and the ground is fertile for Substack’s proposal: editorial independence and direct connection with readers.

The last few weeks have been especially intense in the episode of renowned registrations on the platform. In addition to Brown, the commentator from cnn Van Jones. Also Jane Prattanother cult editor. It’s a clear trend: Substack is looking for recognizable names. Powerful personal brands. Voices with authority.

Mass migration

The pattern repeats. After layoffs in cnn, Chris Cillizza joined the platform. It has almost 22,000 free subscribers and 3,000 paid subscribers. When Messenger closed, Tom LoBianco and Warren Rojas launched 24sightNews. Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim left The Intercept to found Drop Site News, about to reach a quarter of a million subscribers. And it’s just the tip of the iceberg. The company aspired to something more.

In September 2023, Substack announced its intention to make the 2024 presidential election “the Substack election”. It was a declaration of intent and a strategic turn towards political content. A move calculated to fill the void left by Meta, which has been reducing the visibility of political discussions on its platforms for some time. In fact, political conversation on Instagram is almost non-existent compared to what Facebook had in its heyday.

He timingagain, was very precise. Months before, in April 2023, Elon Musk proposed to buy Substack. The offer came during a call with Chris Best, CEO of the platform. Musk even suggested that Best could run the company resulting from the merger, a way to sweeten the operation and make it more attractive for the seller, who reaps the benefits without completely losing control.

Best declined. Substack had its own plans.

The platform had just been developed Notes, your alternative to Twitter / X. It wanted to position itself as a space for reflective political debate. An antidote to the toxicity of social media and visceral opinions. Musk’s proposal would have derailed that plan. It doesn’t matter: Notes has only been the penultimate attempt by many to replace X without much success.

The tension between both companies is evident. McKenzie, co-founder of Substack, recently called Musk “propagandist with more conflicts of interest than El Chapo.” Again, it’s not just a dig: it’s a statement of principles.

But the numbers raise uncomfortable questions.

Substack is still not profitable. In 2021 it lost $22 million. The losses have been reduced, but the company remains in the red. It has raised about $100 million and reached a valuation of over $650 million. It is not enough to reassure some of its investors, who demand more financial transparency.

The business model is simple: Substack takes 10% of subscription revenue. It is a lower percentage than that of other platforms, which usually dance around that 30% dogma. That percentage should be valued lower than usual, but it also means that it needs a huge volume of transactions to be profitable.

The shadow of profitability

Company policies also generate certain conflicts. His staunch defense of freedom of expression caused a scandal when a media as respectable as Atlantic revealed the presence of newsletters with Nazi symbols. Casey Newton, a renowned technology journalist, took his project from Substack, Platformerconsequently. Heather Cox Richardson, with 1.7 million subscribers, said she was also considering leaving.

Other authors, however, are delighted.

They especially value the technical support and internal referral network, which generates more than 30% of new paid subscriptions. The platform also facilitates discussions between subscribers. Many pay just to be able to comment. It is a key detail: talks about how Substack is building communities, not just selling content.

Meghan McCaina conservative commenter who joined in October, sums it up well: She said she prefers Substack to X, where she received “horrible messages” about her family or her appearance. The platform offers a more civil space for debate.

He Mehdi Hasan case It is illustrative. After leaving MSNBCchose Substack to launch Zeteo. He sought assurances that pro-Palestinian speech would not be censored. The platform gave it to them. It now has more than 295,000 subscribers.

Nate Silver, the great American polling guruis another success story. He doubled his prices before the election and his subscribers didn’t complain. Silver Bulletin It occupies third place in the political ranking. On election night it had technical problems with its prediction model, but that has not diminished its popularity.

The message is clear: There is life beyond traditional newsrooms.

But the questions remain.

• Is this model sustainable?
• ¿Can Substack turn its growing influence into a profitable business?
• Are they creating something new or just capitalizing on the traditional media crisis?

Hamish McKenzie, co-founder of the platform, insists that they could be profitable if they wanted to. They prefer to continue investing in growth. It’s a typical Silicon Valley response. Time will tell if it is wisdom or deception. Or self-deception.

Meanwhile, Tina Brown prepares to write on Monday afternoons. And only on Monday afternoons. Maybe that’s the real thermometer. When traditional journalism stars see Substack as an enjoyable hobby, something is changing in the industry.

For better or worse, the future of journalism may be being written in a newsletter.