The Phony Substack Controversy

What does it mean to be a publisher anyway?

I find the “controversy” over Substack exhausting and mostly phony. By phony I mean two things:

1. The attacks have a hidden motivation

2. The criticisms are a comparison to a non-existent ideal

I believe the motivation behind the animosity towards Substack is that its getting around the institutions. Most readers have an interest in a writer, not so much a publisher. So naturally, a popular writer would be able to attract a similar audience on their own and take a higher percentage of their value.

Publishers provide editors of course, but many of those jobs have been cut over the last few years. I’ve highlighted in an earlier post that the editing and writing in publications has suffered greatly. They provide “editorial direction”, but that doesn’t sound like a good thing to a fan of a writer. So what you’re left with is exposure.

There’s more I can get into regarding the motivations, but in this post I want to focus on the non-existent ideal of the publisher model. Specifically the idea that traditional publishers are somehow responsible and transparent.

One of the most important elements of ethical journalism is transparency at all levels. Writers should share who their sources are, or in those few cases where they can’t share, they should be honest about why they can’t reveal them. Writers should be explicit about any bias they have, too. Editors, for their part, must be honest about what their publication’s policies are, including who they are paying and what kinds of gatekeeping they do to hire those writers. This kind of openness is not complex. For example, newspapers generally share the names of their editorial staff, with ways to contact them, so that anyone can contact an editor with a story idea or question. There is a masthead with staff writers’ names on it. 

…

The publication takes responsibility for what it publishes, in both ethical and legal ways.

Emphasis added.

There’s a lot there and most of it is silly. Publishers list the names of their editorial staff, but so does Substack. Substack simply doesn’t list the advances they paid some individuals and as far as I can tell, exposing salaries of staff is not done by any major publisher.

As for gatekeeping, traditional publishers are far from transparent. From letting corporate PR people write their articles, to ignoring child trafficking in exchange for baby pictures, traditional publishers have a dodgy record to say the least. Certainly they’re not responsible “in both ethical and legal ways.”

But let’s dive into this idea of “ethical journalism” in respect to sources.

“sources familiar with his thinking”

What does this mean? This isn’t a rhetorical question. I really want to know. I don’t know the first time I’ve encountered this phrase, but now I see it everywhere. Here’s the phrase in a sentence:

Mr. Cuomo was surprised by the statement from Ms. Gillibrand and Mr. Schumer; he had believed earlier that day that they would not join the calls against him, according to someone familiar with his thinking.

Is there an internal checklist that certifies a source as being “familiar” with someone’s thinking. Is it a psychiatrist level “familiarity”? If so, how many hours would the person have to sit with the subject? How about some transparency ?

It’s not the only type of source.

First Lady Melania Trump is expected to deliver her speech from the White House residence, according to a source familiar with the plans.

I like this one because its a kind of paradox. Wouldn’t someone that told you about the plan have to be “familiar with the plan”?

Or

“I want to help you solve problems,” G.P. said. “I want to be an additive to your life.” Goop is now worth $250 million, according to a source close to the company.

Or even dropping the qualifier altogether:

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, was not at the meeting where the new guidelines were approved, according to a source.

Recently, Washington Post had to issue a correction about a misquoted phone conversation. It appears as though the source ‘familiar with the episode” was not as familiar as we had originally thought. It only came to light once the audio was released, Naturally, for safety and privacy, they didn’t disclose the source. We’ll have to wait for the source to get a deal with Substack before we can demand their identity and financial status.

And the “familiar with the episode” is even higher in the source hierarchy than “familiar with his thinking”. Imagine what else we’re missing.

Was it always like this?

Hard to tell. But if you narrow down the claim to use of the phrase “familiar with his thinking”, we can search for that phrase in a publication like NY Times. It’s not perfect and indexing is likely more sparse on older articles. But the number of articles that use that phrase over time can tell us something about the use of the phrase. The results align with my personal observations:

+-------+-------+
| Year  | Count |
+-------+-------+
| 2008  | 4     |
+-------+-------+
| 2009  | 2     |
+-------+-------+
| 2010  | 1     |
+-------+-------+
| 2011  | 3     |
+-------+-------+
| 2012  | 2     |
+-------+-------+
| 2013  | 4     |
+-------+-------+
| 2014  | 4     |
+-------+-------+
| 2015  | 4     |
+-------+-------+
| 2016  | 3     |
+-------+-------+
| 2017  | 8     |
+-------+-------+
| 2018  | 29    |
+-------+-------+
| 2019  | 30    |
+-------+-------+
| 2020  | 35    |
+-------+-------+
| 2021  | 13    |
+-------+-------+
| Total | 142   |
+-------+-------+

---

The fact is there is nothing special about the “publisher” status. We’ve seen misreporting across publishers. The publisher does not take responsibility in both “ethical and legal ways”. The motivations behind the attack on Substack have to do with the people that do well on Substack: people that have a strong personal brand and felt constrained by traditional publishers.

That’s why this fake Substack controversy is so exhausting and dishonest. It’s disheartening to find the attack coming from fellow writers that could benefit greatly from the Substack model, if only to provide transparency regarding the market value of writers.

There’s nothing special about now that makes the Substack model work. A platform could have afforded writers a simple way to monetize their fan base directly years ago. Now that the genie is out of the bottle, I don’t think we’re going back. So let’s stop with this phony outrage.