I like how you justify the column's length...just in time!
I remember having coffee with Greg Kesich when he'd been the Editorial Page Editor for a couple of years at the Portland Press Herald/Sunday Telegram. Prior to that position he'd been the Business Editor for the same publication. He joked about how in the former position he was panned by readers for his conservative bias, and in the latter position he was accused of being Eugene Debs.
A big takeaway I got from Greg's take (maybe in 2015) was that "it's not grampa's newspaper any more. Walter Cronkite is dead. It is incumbent upon us to be foragers of news. We need to wade through whatever we consider to be fake news or real news and draw conclusions accordingly. Watch MSNBC, then switch it over to FOX to see how they spin the same story.
News is information and we no longer have to wait until the paper lands in the driveway at 6am to access that information." I use quotes but I am paraphrasing.
A friend who is a veteran flak man has been saying this for years: "we are the media now; we are all publishers, whether on TikTok or Substack."
Matt, how about some commentary of tarrifs. So many Trump supporters buy into his mid 20th century views on trade. You are doing a great job on air, but I sense lots of people aren't getting it.
Luv your radio show. Not sure I agree with your take on remote/hybrid work. It is coming, not because people do not want to work hard, but because the new young "bourgeoisie" of knowledge workers want flexibility. They love Elon, but hate the idea of 24/7 expectations, they are in the upper middle and in office is their flex. Were it upta me, hybrid is the way until we are all replaced by AI
I agree with your larger point, about how news media is fragmenting like network television did with the advent of cable television, then internet streaming. Really, it's a reversion to the 1800s when there were tons of opinionated print tracts and pamphlets. I get it.
But to suppose that *anyone* in Maine garners 400 substack subscribers paying $240/year is absurd. Most others are trying to make a go of the substack subscription model at $60/year, and they will not get 100 subscribers (maybe not 50) regularly. Chris Busby's Portland Bollard has tried this for years, charging $75/year, and he ends up mostly just giving his content away for free, using advertising revenue for the print paper.
My earlier specific point was that your venture says more about your circumstance than it does for the viability of the model. You could have said analogously that you were going into day trading or selling real estate - same thing. This risk is fully subsidized by your other, regular day jobs. You can *afford* to be unsuccessful, because you make a lot of money elsewhere. If you end up making more on substack subscriptions than the BDN gig, then it is because the BDN gig paid peanuts, not because the substack model is some sort of gold mine.
And if, somehow, you're able to secure even 100 subscriptions at even $100/year (which would shock me), that will have everything to do with relatively wealthy Southern Maine business folks trying to buy influence and curry favor with you personally and little to nothing at all to do with your content.
It will be like Mills selling her brother's estate at auction (wink, wink) - things sold for multiples of their estimated value because lobbyists wanted to buy favors from the Governor by effectively paying her indirect bribes. A clear-eyed, objective version of you would agree with this, although obviously to a lesser degree (but the principle remains the same).
Substack success, in that scenario, is a small-time influence peddling grift, not predicated on the value of anyone's brilliant wit, insightful takes, or amazing prose. Which, again, makes you the outlier (to the extent that you have some pull), not the typical example (where few others do). Substack subscriptions today are like trying to get someone to pay you to read your personal blog 20 years ago - good luck with that!
Why is it absurd? This is a state of 1.3 MILLION people. 400 people is 0.03 percent of the people who live here, or about one single human being living in each town. And that says nothing of people who may live elsewhere who may be interested in the content, whatever it is. Honestly, if you don't think you can attract that kind of paid subscriber base, than what you are writing doesn't have an audience.
Which is what I would say about Busby. Ever stop to consider that what he produces is garbage and no one wants to pay for it? Hell, very few people want to read it when it is FREE, let alone paid for.
I think you're misunderstanding my argument. I am not saying "literally any human being can earn a living on Substack," what I AM saying is "the Substack model is a fairly easy place for a writer or journalist to earn a living, if they produce a quality product."
I mean, Mike... if I end up writing here two to three times a week, and paywall maybe one single post I write, I would bet you a decent chunk of change I will attract several hundred paid subscribers. Hell, I've already got a rather substantial base and I write at BEST once a week, with no paywall. If I turned this into a "this is all I do" type thing, there is no question that I could get well above that range.
I realize it is a fairly stupendous example to cite, but go look at the obnoxiously popular "Letters from an American" Substack, which currently has MILLIONS of paid subscribers, and is the highest earning page on this platform. She started writing that as little more than "late night Facebook rants" in 2019, and now she earns a preposterous amount of money posting there.
Do I think that is possible for very many people? No. I cite it only to suggest that it is the content you produce having an audience, and your ability to give that content to them in a visible way that matters. That's something a LOT of people can do in a way that would earn a living here. Failure to recognize that is, in my opinion, an inability to break away from the "old" mindset of what media is and how it works.
Regarding me, is this a "side gig" project of sorts? Yes. Can I do that because I have the security of "other things?" Yes. I'm not sure, though, why you think that means that my particular circumstance is the only way that the "Substack model," as it were, has any hope of being successful. And respectfully, literally ANYONE has the ability to do something like this on the side. It takes a little bit of time, and a little bit of writing talent, and that's about it. Back in the old days of blogging, before a smart means of monetization existed for this type of thing, I used to write things at like 10 pm before bed after my work day was done and the kid was in bed. One does not need any specific circumstance to make this kind of thing work.
Now, could you quit your job and overnight replace your income, if you are say a journalist? Depends on who you are. I would acknowledge that a "small time" reporter at a BDN or PPH would not be able to replace their income immediately. With that said, I am VERY confident that if they worked hard and produced a quality product, they could replace it in relatively short order (I would say 6 months).
If what you write is unoriginal dreck that no one wants (i.e. what a lot of journalists at those papers write) than yeah, you are going to fail to get an audience and make no money.
But that's the point I'm making: this is now turning journalism into a much more functional market where uninteresting and untalented journos are going to die off, and the actually productive, actually interesting, actually talented ones can create audiences that are, to them, MORE lucrative by cutting out the middle man at the old media property.
Shorter version: newspapers are dying because their model is 100 years old and consumers don't want it anymore. They'd rather pay money directly to people they feel give them something they want.
"...if I end up writing here two to three times a week, and paywall maybe one single post I write, I would bet you a decent chunk of change I will attract several hundred paid subscribers."
I will take this wager. But let's make it more symbolic, just a one dollar bill and bragging rights. Check back with me in December on your subscription numbers; I'll take you at your word if you say that it's 300+.
Most people in Maine do not even know what substack is, Matt. Relatively few will ever pay *any* money for content from it. I'm just as confident that far, far fewer than 300 local Maine residents will pay you consistently for content from it.
I agree that newspapers are dying, but generally, people still want free text content. The early internet taught us that text content was free, and this became our expectation. Substack ain't Only Fans, buddy.
The only way niche substack writers make a go of it as even a paltry side hustle is by having other non-substack income (definitely you) or from people (friends, family, business associates, lobbyists) trying to curry favor with them by subscribing (possibly you). You point out the millionaire exception, but the iron clad rule is that, like the early 2000s blogs, nobody wants to meaningfully pay for somebody else's singular opinion.
Besides, almost all substack writers produce unoriginal dreck. So, it's reverts back to the real estate agent model - few make a lot, few earn enough for a living, but the vast, vast majority make nothing, or near-nothing, and fail. Over 200,000 agents drop their National Association of Realtors membership. Every. Year.
This is the appropriate substack analogy. Almost everyone fails at monetizing it. And you want in on that club, lol.
I'm bemused to read your optimism in the subscription model for content generation, either on substack or another platform. If you make more money doing so, it will be because of the pittance derived from the former BDN opinion piece and not any future substack subscription bounty you reap.
Regardless, it is a luxury almost solely only you can afford, with your quarter-million dollar day job salary plus the additional $40k+ from the morning radio side hustle gig (yes, yes, I understand it's expensive to raise a family in Yarmouth). Vanishingly few others in Maine will be able to do likewise however, which belies the confidence in your take that it is possibly viable/sustainable (spoiler alert: it is not).
In short, if the substack subscription model isn't successful for you, there's really no negative consequence. Everyone else who might attempt a similar venture is not nearly in the same financial boat as you are, Matt.
For you, this fantasy of monetizing a modern-day blog experiment is like comic book, stamp, or baseball card collecting - just a hobby, with zero financial imperative. Which makes you the outlier, not others.
I don't think you have a firm grasp on the economics of this model, Mike. I'm doing this primarily to give a place for my writing, and if I end up earning more than what BDN was paying me (which I basically already am) than great. But this venue is absolutely a viable one for journalists and writers who do not have a similar large platform.
The Bangor Daily News just launched a $35 per month "insider" newsletter, which they employ Mike Shepherd predominantly to write for them.
Imagine if Mike decided to cut out the middle man and launch the exact same product on Substack, and say charge $20 per month, it would only take 416 subscribers for him to earn $100,000 per year. Now I don't know what his salary is, but I doubt it is 100k, which means that it would probably only take 200-300 subscribers to replicate his income here.
That would need to be built, but as someone who has some experience at this, I can tell you it wouldn't be very hard to do that for anyone that wants to make a go at it, who actually writes things that people find valuable. It is no guarantee: you may not be as interesting as you think you are, or maybe don't know how to find and cultivate an audience... but the model is very powerful and very easy to make work.
And no, not as a vanity side gig that only "some of us" can do. That's the point.
Regardless, I was talking about the shift in legacy media anyway, and it is simply an undeniable fact that more and more journalists are turning to stuff like this over the "old" gatekeepers. Hell, Krugman ditched his NYT column for a Substack, reporters like Chris Cilizza are over here now... Bari Weiss' Free Press was LAUNCHED here when she got axed from the mainstream media landscape.
My real point was not "any random shleb can do this," although I believe they can. The point was "the big established media enterprises are dying because their model is stupid and both journalists and consumers are increasingly turning to models like this instead."
I haven't paid for a subscription to a newspaper for a long time. I think I got screwed by a subscription that didn't take. Well it took the money. A one-way transaction.
Matthew, I love your perspectives. Recently you have been far more outspoken. You know I believe that unless the GOP starts doing its homework and speaking up for our beliefs, it will loose the race to 2026. And honestly, that is not a race we want to lose.
That is a smart plan. People have become tired of People telling them how to think. I'm less likely to read something if I'm hit with the standard liberal narrative.
I like how you justify the column's length...just in time!
I remember having coffee with Greg Kesich when he'd been the Editorial Page Editor for a couple of years at the Portland Press Herald/Sunday Telegram. Prior to that position he'd been the Business Editor for the same publication. He joked about how in the former position he was panned by readers for his conservative bias, and in the latter position he was accused of being Eugene Debs.
A big takeaway I got from Greg's take (maybe in 2015) was that "it's not grampa's newspaper any more. Walter Cronkite is dead. It is incumbent upon us to be foragers of news. We need to wade through whatever we consider to be fake news or real news and draw conclusions accordingly. Watch MSNBC, then switch it over to FOX to see how they spin the same story.
News is information and we no longer have to wait until the paper lands in the driveway at 6am to access that information." I use quotes but I am paraphrasing.
A friend who is a veteran flak man has been saying this for years: "we are the media now; we are all publishers, whether on TikTok or Substack."
Good piece Matt.
This is exactly why I am a paid subscriber.
You're awesome Mary, thank you!
Matt, how about some commentary of tarrifs. So many Trump supporters buy into his mid 20th century views on trade. You are doing a great job on air, but I sense lots of people aren't getting it.
Believe it or not I am working on one
Luv your radio show. Not sure I agree with your take on remote/hybrid work. It is coming, not because people do not want to work hard, but because the new young "bourgeoisie" of knowledge workers want flexibility. They love Elon, but hate the idea of 24/7 expectations, they are in the upper middle and in office is their flex. Were it upta me, hybrid is the way until we are all replaced by AI
I agree with your larger point, about how news media is fragmenting like network television did with the advent of cable television, then internet streaming. Really, it's a reversion to the 1800s when there were tons of opinionated print tracts and pamphlets. I get it.
But to suppose that *anyone* in Maine garners 400 substack subscribers paying $240/year is absurd. Most others are trying to make a go of the substack subscription model at $60/year, and they will not get 100 subscribers (maybe not 50) regularly. Chris Busby's Portland Bollard has tried this for years, charging $75/year, and he ends up mostly just giving his content away for free, using advertising revenue for the print paper.
My earlier specific point was that your venture says more about your circumstance than it does for the viability of the model. You could have said analogously that you were going into day trading or selling real estate - same thing. This risk is fully subsidized by your other, regular day jobs. You can *afford* to be unsuccessful, because you make a lot of money elsewhere. If you end up making more on substack subscriptions than the BDN gig, then it is because the BDN gig paid peanuts, not because the substack model is some sort of gold mine.
And if, somehow, you're able to secure even 100 subscriptions at even $100/year (which would shock me), that will have everything to do with relatively wealthy Southern Maine business folks trying to buy influence and curry favor with you personally and little to nothing at all to do with your content.
It will be like Mills selling her brother's estate at auction (wink, wink) - things sold for multiples of their estimated value because lobbyists wanted to buy favors from the Governor by effectively paying her indirect bribes. A clear-eyed, objective version of you would agree with this, although obviously to a lesser degree (but the principle remains the same).
Substack success, in that scenario, is a small-time influence peddling grift, not predicated on the value of anyone's brilliant wit, insightful takes, or amazing prose. Which, again, makes you the outlier (to the extent that you have some pull), not the typical example (where few others do). Substack subscriptions today are like trying to get someone to pay you to read your personal blog 20 years ago - good luck with that!
Why is it absurd? This is a state of 1.3 MILLION people. 400 people is 0.03 percent of the people who live here, or about one single human being living in each town. And that says nothing of people who may live elsewhere who may be interested in the content, whatever it is. Honestly, if you don't think you can attract that kind of paid subscriber base, than what you are writing doesn't have an audience.
Which is what I would say about Busby. Ever stop to consider that what he produces is garbage and no one wants to pay for it? Hell, very few people want to read it when it is FREE, let alone paid for.
I think you're misunderstanding my argument. I am not saying "literally any human being can earn a living on Substack," what I AM saying is "the Substack model is a fairly easy place for a writer or journalist to earn a living, if they produce a quality product."
I mean, Mike... if I end up writing here two to three times a week, and paywall maybe one single post I write, I would bet you a decent chunk of change I will attract several hundred paid subscribers. Hell, I've already got a rather substantial base and I write at BEST once a week, with no paywall. If I turned this into a "this is all I do" type thing, there is no question that I could get well above that range.
I realize it is a fairly stupendous example to cite, but go look at the obnoxiously popular "Letters from an American" Substack, which currently has MILLIONS of paid subscribers, and is the highest earning page on this platform. She started writing that as little more than "late night Facebook rants" in 2019, and now she earns a preposterous amount of money posting there.
Do I think that is possible for very many people? No. I cite it only to suggest that it is the content you produce having an audience, and your ability to give that content to them in a visible way that matters. That's something a LOT of people can do in a way that would earn a living here. Failure to recognize that is, in my opinion, an inability to break away from the "old" mindset of what media is and how it works.
Regarding me, is this a "side gig" project of sorts? Yes. Can I do that because I have the security of "other things?" Yes. I'm not sure, though, why you think that means that my particular circumstance is the only way that the "Substack model," as it were, has any hope of being successful. And respectfully, literally ANYONE has the ability to do something like this on the side. It takes a little bit of time, and a little bit of writing talent, and that's about it. Back in the old days of blogging, before a smart means of monetization existed for this type of thing, I used to write things at like 10 pm before bed after my work day was done and the kid was in bed. One does not need any specific circumstance to make this kind of thing work.
Now, could you quit your job and overnight replace your income, if you are say a journalist? Depends on who you are. I would acknowledge that a "small time" reporter at a BDN or PPH would not be able to replace their income immediately. With that said, I am VERY confident that if they worked hard and produced a quality product, they could replace it in relatively short order (I would say 6 months).
If what you write is unoriginal dreck that no one wants (i.e. what a lot of journalists at those papers write) than yeah, you are going to fail to get an audience and make no money.
But that's the point I'm making: this is now turning journalism into a much more functional market where uninteresting and untalented journos are going to die off, and the actually productive, actually interesting, actually talented ones can create audiences that are, to them, MORE lucrative by cutting out the middle man at the old media property.
Shorter version: newspapers are dying because their model is 100 years old and consumers don't want it anymore. They'd rather pay money directly to people they feel give them something they want.
"...if I end up writing here two to three times a week, and paywall maybe one single post I write, I would bet you a decent chunk of change I will attract several hundred paid subscribers."
I will take this wager. But let's make it more symbolic, just a one dollar bill and bragging rights. Check back with me in December on your subscription numbers; I'll take you at your word if you say that it's 300+.
Most people in Maine do not even know what substack is, Matt. Relatively few will ever pay *any* money for content from it. I'm just as confident that far, far fewer than 300 local Maine residents will pay you consistently for content from it.
I agree that newspapers are dying, but generally, people still want free text content. The early internet taught us that text content was free, and this became our expectation. Substack ain't Only Fans, buddy.
The only way niche substack writers make a go of it as even a paltry side hustle is by having other non-substack income (definitely you) or from people (friends, family, business associates, lobbyists) trying to curry favor with them by subscribing (possibly you). You point out the millionaire exception, but the iron clad rule is that, like the early 2000s blogs, nobody wants to meaningfully pay for somebody else's singular opinion.
Besides, almost all substack writers produce unoriginal dreck. So, it's reverts back to the real estate agent model - few make a lot, few earn enough for a living, but the vast, vast majority make nothing, or near-nothing, and fail. Over 200,000 agents drop their National Association of Realtors membership. Every. Year.
This is the appropriate substack analogy. Almost everyone fails at monetizing it. And you want in on that club, lol.
I'm bemused to read your optimism in the subscription model for content generation, either on substack or another platform. If you make more money doing so, it will be because of the pittance derived from the former BDN opinion piece and not any future substack subscription bounty you reap.
Regardless, it is a luxury almost solely only you can afford, with your quarter-million dollar day job salary plus the additional $40k+ from the morning radio side hustle gig (yes, yes, I understand it's expensive to raise a family in Yarmouth). Vanishingly few others in Maine will be able to do likewise however, which belies the confidence in your take that it is possibly viable/sustainable (spoiler alert: it is not).
In short, if the substack subscription model isn't successful for you, there's really no negative consequence. Everyone else who might attempt a similar venture is not nearly in the same financial boat as you are, Matt.
For you, this fantasy of monetizing a modern-day blog experiment is like comic book, stamp, or baseball card collecting - just a hobby, with zero financial imperative. Which makes you the outlier, not others.
I don't think you have a firm grasp on the economics of this model, Mike. I'm doing this primarily to give a place for my writing, and if I end up earning more than what BDN was paying me (which I basically already am) than great. But this venue is absolutely a viable one for journalists and writers who do not have a similar large platform.
The Bangor Daily News just launched a $35 per month "insider" newsletter, which they employ Mike Shepherd predominantly to write for them.
Imagine if Mike decided to cut out the middle man and launch the exact same product on Substack, and say charge $20 per month, it would only take 416 subscribers for him to earn $100,000 per year. Now I don't know what his salary is, but I doubt it is 100k, which means that it would probably only take 200-300 subscribers to replicate his income here.
That would need to be built, but as someone who has some experience at this, I can tell you it wouldn't be very hard to do that for anyone that wants to make a go at it, who actually writes things that people find valuable. It is no guarantee: you may not be as interesting as you think you are, or maybe don't know how to find and cultivate an audience... but the model is very powerful and very easy to make work.
And no, not as a vanity side gig that only "some of us" can do. That's the point.
Regardless, I was talking about the shift in legacy media anyway, and it is simply an undeniable fact that more and more journalists are turning to stuff like this over the "old" gatekeepers. Hell, Krugman ditched his NYT column for a Substack, reporters like Chris Cilizza are over here now... Bari Weiss' Free Press was LAUNCHED here when she got axed from the mainstream media landscape.
My real point was not "any random shleb can do this," although I believe they can. The point was "the big established media enterprises are dying because their model is stupid and both journalists and consumers are increasingly turning to models like this instead."
interesting perspective - the antithesis of Smart Brevity. I look forward to reading you perspectives
I haven't paid for a subscription to a newspaper for a long time. I think I got screwed by a subscription that didn't take. Well it took the money. A one-way transaction.
Matthew, I love your perspectives. Recently you have been far more outspoken. You know I believe that unless the GOP starts doing its homework and speaking up for our beliefs, it will loose the race to 2026. And honestly, that is not a race we want to lose.
GiddyUp Papa
That is a smart plan. People have become tired of People telling them how to think. I'm less likely to read something if I'm hit with the standard liberal narrative.