As traditional media fizzles out, overtaken by billionnaires such as Murdoch, Bezos and Ellisson unashamedly peddling their ideological and technological agendas as journalistic fact, and as social media cannibalizes what is left, channeling us into echo-chambers, many independent analysts have turned towards platforms such as Substack or Patreon (which allow for paid subscriptions).
These contributors typically offer some content for free, but only paid subscribers get the full columns and analysis.
Each subscription is reasonably priced – in my experience $5.00 to $10.00 a month.
The problem, though, is that each subscription is very limited: although a wide variety of columns and journalism is available, this variety is unreachable without many subscriptions, and its quality difficult to ascertain.
Price and echo chambers
Although each subscription is relatively affordable, the essence of obtaining a rounded view of current affairs is variety.
An on-line subscription to a traditional newspaper, such as the New York Times, provides access to a wide variety of columnists and news items for about $25.00 per month. It costs more than any single Substack subscription, and has its own editorial slant, but is still better value than paying $7.50 a month (on average) for each of four individual commentators or journalists.
Subscribing to two or three ‘traditional’ edited newspapers – which, for argument’s sake, will cost me $75.00 per month – is likely to provide far greater variety of opinion and news than subscribing to ten Substack columns (of which the quality is uncertain because it rests solely on the reputation of the individuals running them, and because no individual can consistently provide original and insightful content day-in day-out).
The isolation of individuals providing Substack content also contributes to echo-chambers – one tends to pay for content one agrees with, and columnists will provide for their audiences.
When I read La Presse, The Guardian, the New York Times or The Economist, even though their editorial lines are fairly agreeable to me, I am not solely fed ideas and content I agree with. I am fed a variety of opinions, as well as news reports.
Reputation, quality and editing
There is a huge amount of fake news and dubious information across the internet. I do not have the time to assess the trustworthiness of each source, or the validity of each opinion.
Whilst recognizing that all editors introduce some bias, traditional news organizations adhere to journalistic standards of fact-checking, verification of sources, and – if necessary – retraction.
I can therefore (guardedly) delegate the assessment of information quality to traditional news outlets, whilst never relying on only one: that way I gain some perspective on the biases of each. Bias is inevitable and not, of itself, problematic provided that facts are verified and rigorous journalistic standards adhered to (which includes clearly separating opinion from reporting).
Whatever the quality of the pieces I come across on Substack – and many are excellent – I can only consider them as opinion pieces, and need to cross-check any assertion of fact. Only a very few contributors – such as Paul Krugman, a Nobel prize winning economist, former New York Time columnist, and academic whose work I have been citing for the last three decades – do I trust, but I suspect that Krugman himself would caution that his Substack pieces are only (very) informed opinion.
To conclude: towards born-again traditional media?
I fail to see how the Substack model can continue in its current form: eventually someone will come along and propose to aggregate, say, 10 to 20 contributors, for a flat fee of, say, $25.00 a month.
Some of these aggregators will insist upon rigorous journalistic standards, fact-checking, and the separation of opinion from reporting. In due course this will be noted, and people such as myself will begin delegating fact-checking and source-verification to these aggregators (who may well become known as publishers and editors).
Traditional media will be born-again!
Richard Shearmur 