The Substack "Moment" Accelerates

Rushdie also laid out his vision for the type of writings that would come to populate his profile, which he has named "Salman's Sea of Stories," including that he plans to post twice each week, offer both paid and unpaid content, and release his latest work of fiction in serialized form through the platform. And in an interview with The Guardian also released on September 1st, Rushdie told Shelley Hepworth that his foray into Substack would also allow him to fulfill his long-standing desire to write film criticism after having been previously denied the opportunity at The New Yorkerwhen the film critic Rushdie was set to replace decided against taking paternity leave.

How Rushdie describes what he plans to do with his Substack speaks to the eclectic nature of the content the platform supports; Rushdie, as was alluded to above, plans to offer a mix of literary criticism, the aforementioned film reviews and "the stories behind the stories I'll be telling," while also interacting with readers and fans by answering their questions. And as he implies when he speaks of that lack of "intermediaries or gatekeepers," we might expect Rushdie's latest writings to bear some of the trademarks of Substack posts: being slightly less toned down or wordsmithed as those final drafts that have undergone multiple rounds of edits and feature input from various editors. This is to take a step away from what Bari Weiss, another recent arrival to Substack, said of the editorial process at today's New York Times, where "every line is carefully massaged, negotiated and caveated."

Although I am -- in theory -- a defender of the traditional editorial process and the benefits that tend to accrue from editors providing insight and feedback, the reality Weiss alludes to in the letter from which that above quotation is drawn (and a reality also described by others displaced from the traditional outlets who have now taken up a post at Substack) is that too much of today's editorial process is about injecting ideology and certain pieties at the expense of preserving the writer's own style and perspectives.

As such, it is no surprise that many writers and thinkers who do not fit neatly into the current iteration of the two-party system and its corresponding media analogs would look for alternatives, with Substack now being a prime destination. From Glenn Loury to Glenn Greenwald to Matt Taibbi, well-known writers -- many of whom used to be at the legacy brands -- have gone off on their own via Substack. (Taibbi's August 13th piece "The Vanishing Legacy of Barack Obama" is a prime example of a recent Substack essay to generate considerable attention and discussion.)

As has been discussed by other commentators, many journalists and editors still housed at traditional outlets have been sharply and unreasonably critical of Substack ("the lady doth protest too much"), which is likely explained by the threat that Substack may pose to their ways of doing things (and, of course, their business models). At times derisively dubbed "the Substackerati," those writers who successfully make their way on Substack demonstrate two things. The first is that they do not, in fact, need editors. And secondly, they can accurately determine their financial value as writers by being paid directly by their subscribers rather than through the publication for which they might have otherwise worked. And now with Rushdie's latest move, one cannot help but wonder if we shall see a further influx of well-known fiction writers and novelists, as well as if those in the publishing industry might, in turn, begin launching similar barbs against Substack as those in the news media have.

Substack might reasonably be seen in the context of other platforms that have offered writers or users the ability to post their unvarnished commentaries sans an editorial process and with the opportunity to pursue individual monetization. Platforms in this mold range from Medium to the upstart (and admittedly now faltering) alternative social media site Thinkspot. And this, of course, also comes at a time when -- as I have covered in previous columns -- many of the legacy media brands are experiencing cratering credibility and public trust.

Substack, of course, is not without criticism. It has, for instance, been pilloried for an alleged lack of transparency about to which writers it has offered advances. However, in my view, the more substantive criticism would be that Substack risks falling victim to the phenomenon that caused Huffington Postto disband its contributors platform in January of 2018: "When everyone has a megaphone, no one can be heard." Just as concerns mount about the oversaturation of the podcast market ("Yes, I have a podcast. Who doesn't?"), the same might be said of the ever-ballooning number of writers -- established and aspiring alike -- who now have set up a Substack newsletter.

Yet this has done little to assuage the growing anxiety on the part of many at the household name outlets about the risk that Substack and other similar, upstart ventures might pose to their relative share of the conversation and the accompanying advertiser (or subscriber) dollars. To this point, Substack completed a $65 million round of new funding earlier this year, has recently acquired the conversation platform Letter, and enables some of its better known writers -- such as Andrew Sullivan -- to take home earnings in the seven-figures, far more than they would be paid at a given newspaper or magazine. Time will, of course, tell if Substack follows the tech giants, companies to which it is sometimes compared, in beginning to moderate content, a change of direction that would cause it likely to lose its competitive advantage. In the meantime, however, the Substack "moment," as today's jargon would have it, is more than just continuing; Rushdie's entrance shows that it is accelerating.

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