Ελευθερία και substack
As more journalists get pushed out of their jobs, get fed up with their bosses, or just want to breathe the cool air of freedom, they now have what appears to be a viable escape hatch. Recently a lot of them are taking advantage of it. Jeff Bezos has been good to Substack: The Washington Post editorial page’s apparent recent disinterest in stopping democracy from dying has led popular opinion writer Jennifer Rubin to start a publication called The Contrarian, and censored editorial Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes now publishes on Substack as well. Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hassan started his own publication. Even Chuck Todd has gone indie.
Ο Steven Levy γράφει στο Wired για το Substack, τους δημοσιογράφους που προσπαθούν να γράφουν ελεύθεροι και να βρουν τους «1000 αληθινούς θαυμαστές τους» και την κούραση με τις τόσες συνδρομές.
Cox is referring to subscription fatigue, which is something I think of every time a sign-up page pops up when opening a new Substack. Typically, Substack pros solicit a monthly fee of $5-10 or an annual rate of $50-150. Usually there’s a free tier of content, but journalists who hope to make at least part of their livelihood on Substack save the good stuff for paid customers. Compared to subscribing to full-fledged publications, this is a terrible value proposition. [..] It doesn’t take too many of those subscriptions to match the cost of The New York Times, which probably has 100 journalists as good as Substack writers, and you get Wordle to boot.
Εδώ και καιρό σκέφτομαι ότι το Substack θα πρέπει να πειραματιστεί με το bundling, ίσως κάποιου είδους "dynamic bundling" (ορίζεται αυτό άραγε;) για να βγάλει νόημα για περισσότερο κόσμο. Είμαι ίσως επηρεασμένος από τη σειρά κειμένων του Shishir Mehrotra για το bundling αλλά και τη γνωστή φράση του Jim Barksdale: “Gentlemen, there’s only two ways I know of to make money: bundling and unbundling.”
Από την άλλη, πόσο τυχεροί όλοι οι αγγλόφωνοι δημοσιογράφοι και αναλυτές που έχουν για πιθανό κοινό τους μερικά δισεκατομμύρια.