This coming year, 2021, is when general interest publications will finally embrace micropayments for consumers who aren’t ready to make a long-term commitment, or who only want to access one or two articles without adding another username and password to their growing list of subscriptions.
Just kidding. I don’t think that’s ever going to happen, in part because, as this Digiday article on “why micropayments for news schemes struggle to take off” explained way back in 2015, they’re “mentally taxing for users.” (For more on the problems with micropayments, see this Twitter thread.)
What’s also mentally — and financially! — taxing for users, though, is that lengthening list of subscriptions. It never stops growing. As more writers extricate themselves from the publishers that helped to create their brand in the first place, consumers are left deciding which, and how many, to follow into independence. Even if you use a password manager (or are one of the lucky few who don’t seem to need to log back into your New York account every single time you navigate to Vulture or The Cut), there are still all the monthly payments, and they add up. Just two Substack subscriptions at $5/month will cost you as much as an entire year of The New Yorker. Most of us are going to max out soon, if we haven’t already.
Writers know this. It’s a good gig if you can get it, as they say, but just as there’s only one Stephenie Meyer despite modern-day self-publishing entering middle age, there’s also only one Andrew Sullivan and one Glenn Greenwald (thankfully). And though we’d like there to be more, there’s also only one Ann Friedman, who recently wrote openly about how newsletters are “a bit of a pyramid scheme” in that “a few successful people at the top make it seem like the system works for everyone, when in fact there is no way for most folks to make it up from the bottom.” When the venture capital funding that Substack is passing on to creators in order to lure them to the platform runs dry, we’ll see how many are making enough to keep putting in the hours on their own.
Will the go-it-alone model work for many? Maybe! The team behind Substack has built something I find truly enjoyable, and I’ll celebrate any attempt to build new revenue streams for writing and reporting (though how much reporting can be done without support systems — editors, fact-checkers, copy-editors, and lawyers, oh my — remains to be seen).
But what I think you’re more likely to see, and soon, are more bundles. When writers can’t make it on their own, they’ll band together. When they want to share the responsibilities for figuring out insurance and health care and other benefits, they’ll join forces with others who want similar things. When they want to put out a weekly product but only be responsible for publishing once a month, they’ll find three friends. And it’ll be easier for potential subscribers to justify the expense of a bundle — not just more content, but a diversity of content, and voices, all for one price and under one subscription. It’ll probably look a lot like a magazine, but on the internet. Growing up, we used to call them blogs. (Unless you’re Slate, which has been calling itself a magazine for 24 years now, even though it only looks like one if you print it out at home and staple it together yourself.)
The primary difference is that these blogs, these magazines, these whatevers, will be built and guided by the individual creators for their audience, not by the executives they once reported to or their shareholders and owners. And that’s interesting. You’re unlikely to see a new brand from Condé Nast this year, which is still trying (and failing) to clean up the ongoing problems at Bon Appetit. But we’ve already seen exciting new launches like Defector, from the team that brought you Deadspin, and Brick House, a media cooperative owned by the editors of the publications that it houses.
Maybe these will live on Substack 2.0, which is almost certainly going to create its own bundling tools, and soon, despite its claims that it’s not a publisher or media company. Or they’ll live on Lede, a new publishing and subscription platform from the people behind Alley. Or they’ll look completely different from either of those things. It won’t matter much to readers, who all benefit from the great re-bundling. Or to writers, who have an opportunity here to create a more fair and equitable media industry, this time from the bottom up.
Nicholas Jackson is the director of content at Built In and former editor-in-chief of Pacific Standard.
This coming year, 2021, is when general interest publications will finally embrace micropayments for consumers who aren’t ready to make a long-term commitment, or who only want to access one or two articles without adding another username and password to their growing list of subscriptions.
Just kidding. I don’t think that’s ever going to happen, in part because, as this Digiday article on “why micropayments for news schemes struggle to take off” explained way back in 2015, they’re “mentally taxing for users.” (For more on the problems with micropayments, see this Twitter thread.)
What’s also mentally — and financially! — taxing for users, though, is that lengthening list of subscriptions. It never stops growing. As more writers extricate themselves from the publishers that helped to create their brand in the first place, consumers are left deciding which, and how many, to follow into independence. Even if you use a password manager (or are one of the lucky few who don’t seem to need to log back into your New York account every single time you navigate to Vulture or The Cut), there are still all the monthly payments, and they add up. Just two Substack subscriptions at $5/month will cost you as much as an entire year of The New Yorker. Most of us are going to max out soon, if we haven’t already.
Writers know this. It’s a good gig if you can get it, as they say, but just as there’s only one Stephenie Meyer despite modern-day self-publishing entering middle age, there’s also only one Andrew Sullivan and one Glenn Greenwald (thankfully). And though we’d like there to be more, there’s also only one Ann Friedman, who recently wrote openly about how newsletters are “a bit of a pyramid scheme” in that “a few successful people at the top make it seem like the system works for everyone, when in fact there is no way for most folks to make it up from the bottom.” When the venture capital funding that Substack is passing on to creators in order to lure them to the platform runs dry, we’ll see how many are making enough to keep putting in the hours on their own.
Will the go-it-alone model work for many? Maybe! The team behind Substack has built something I find truly enjoyable, and I’ll celebrate any attempt to build new revenue streams for writing and reporting (though how much reporting can be done without support systems — editors, fact-checkers, copy-editors, and lawyers, oh my — remains to be seen).
But what I think you’re more likely to see, and soon, are more bundles. When writers can’t make it on their own, they’ll band together. When they want to share the responsibilities for figuring out insurance and health care and other benefits, they’ll join forces with others who want similar things. When they want to put out a weekly product but only be responsible for publishing once a month, they’ll find three friends. And it’ll be easier for potential subscribers to justify the expense of a bundle — not just more content, but a diversity of content, and voices, all for one price and under one subscription. It’ll probably look a lot like a magazine, but on the internet. Growing up, we used to call them blogs. (Unless you’re Slate, which has been calling itself a magazine for 24 years now, even though it only looks like one if you print it out at home and staple it together yourself.)
The primary difference is that these blogs, these magazines, these whatevers, will be built and guided by the individual creators for their audience, not by the executives they once reported to or their shareholders and owners. And that’s interesting. You’re unlikely to see a new brand from Condé Nast this year, which is still trying (and failing) to clean up the ongoing problems at Bon Appetit. But we’ve already seen exciting new launches like Defector, from the team that brought you Deadspin, and Brick House, a media cooperative owned by the editors of the publications that it houses.
Maybe these will live on Substack 2.0, which is almost certainly going to create its own bundling tools, and soon, despite its claims that it’s not a publisher or media company. Or they’ll live on Lede, a new publishing and subscription platform from the people behind Alley. Or they’ll look completely different from either of those things. It won’t matter much to readers, who all benefit from the great re-bundling. Or to writers, who have an opportunity here to create a more fair and equitable media industry, this time from the bottom up.
Nicholas Jackson is the director of content at Built In and former editor-in-chief of Pacific Standard.
Zizi Papacharissi The year we rebuild the infrastructure of truth
Victor Pickard The commercial era for local journalism is over
Garance Franke-Ruta Rebundling content, rebuilding connections
Tanya Cordrey Declining trust forces publishers to claim (or disclaim) values
Brian Moritz The year sports journalism changes for good
Edward Roussel Tech companies get aggressive in local
Sue Cross A global consensus around the kind of news we need to save
Tamar Charney Public radio has a midlife crisis
Nico Gendron Ask your readers to help build your products
María Sánchez Díez Traffic will plummet — and it’ll be ok
Astead W. Herndon The Trump-sized window of the media caring about race closes again
Francesca Tripodi Don’t expect breaking up Google and Facebook to solve our information woes
Nonny de la Pena News reaches the third dimension
Mike Ananny Toward better tech journalism
Jeremy Gilbert Human-centered journalism
Parker Molloy The press will risk elevating a Shadow President Trump
Kristen Muller Engaged journalism scales
Steve Henn Has independent podcasting peaked?
Sarah Stonbely Videoconferencing brings more geographic diversity
Beena Raghavendran Journalism gets fused with art
Colleen Shalby The definition of good journalism shifts
Meredith D. Clark The year journalism starts paying reparations
Janet Haven and Sam Hinds Is this an AI newsroom?
Juleyka Lantigua The download, podcasting’s metric king, gets dethroned
Ariel Zirulnick Local newsrooms question their paywalls
Anna Nirmala Local news orgs grasp the urgency of community roots
Joshua P. Darr Legislatures will tackle the local news crisis
Shaydanay Urbani and Nancy Watzman Local collaboration is key to slowing misinformation
Jean Friedman-Rudovsky and Cassie Haynes A shift from conversation to action
Nikki Usher Don’t expect an antitrust dividend for the media
David Chavern Local video finally gets momentum
A.J. Bauer The year of MAGAcal thinking
Jody Brannon People won’t renew
Talmon Joseph Smith The media rejects deficit hawkery
David Skok A pandemic-prompted wave of consolidation
Sara M. Watson Return of the RSS reader
Mandy Jenkins You build trust by helping your readers
Rick Berke Virtual events are here to stay
Marie Shanahan Journalism schools stop perpetuating the status quo
Zainab Khan From understanding to feeling
Brandy Zadrozny Misinformation fatigue sets in
Hossein Derakhshan Mass personalization of truth
Doris Truong Indigenous issues get long-overdue mainstream coverage
Don Day Business first, journalism second
Marcus Mabry News orgs adapt to a post-Trump world (with Trump still in it)
Hadjar Benmiloud Get representative, or die trying
Loretta Chao Open up the profession
Natalie Meade Journalism enters rehab
Alfred Hermida and Oscar Westlund The virus ups data journalism’s game
Julia Angwin Show your (computational) work
Mike Caulfield 2021’s misinformation will look a lot like 2020’s (and 2019’s, and…)
John Ketchum More journalists of color become newsroom founders
Jennifer Brandel A sneak peak at power mapping, 2073’s top innovation
Jessica Clark News becomes plural
Robert Hernandez Data and shame
Delia Cai Subscriptions start working for the middle
Pablo Boczkowski Audiences have revolted. Will newsrooms adapt?
Celeste Headlee The rise of radical newsroom transparency
Kate Myers My son will join every Zoom call in our industry
Kerri Hoffman Protecting podcasting’s open ecosystem
Raney Aronson-Rath To get past information divides, we need to understand them first
Ben Werdmuller The web blooms again
Andrew Ramsammy Stop being polite and start getting real
Laura E. Davis The focus turns to newsroom leaders for lasting change
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen Stop pretending publishers are a united front
C.W. Anderson Journalism changed under Trump — will it keep changing under Biden?
Masuma Ahuja We’ll remember how interconnected our world is
Kawandeep Virdee Goodbye, doomscroll
Anthony Nadler Journalism struggles to find a new model of legitimacy
Tonya Mosley True equity means ownership
Nicholas Jackson Blogging is back, but better
Matt Skibinski Misinformation won’t stop unless we stop it
Jesse Holcomb Genre erosion in nonprofit journalism
Christoph Mergerson Black Americans will demand more from journalism
Sonali Prasad Making disaster journalism that cuts through the noise
Mark Stenberg The rise of the journalist-influencer
Bo Hee Kim Newsrooms create an intentional and collaborative culture
Ryan Kellett The bundle gets bundled
Sam Ford We’ll find better ways to archive our work
Kevin D. Grant Parachute journalism goes away for good
Tim Carmody Spotify will make big waves in video
Andrew Donohue The rise of the democracy beat
Richard Tofel Less on politics, more on how government works (or doesn’t)
Aaron Foley Diversity gains haven’t shown up in local news
M. Scott Havens Traditional pay TV will embrace the disruption
Sumi Aggarwal News literacy programs aren’t child’s play
Sarah Marshall The year audiences need extra cheer
Tauhid Chappell and Mike Rispoli Defund the crime beat
Rachel Schallom The rise of nonprofit journalism continues
Stefanie Murray and Anthony Advincula Expect to see more translations and non-English content
Michael W. Wagner Fractured democracy, fractured journalism
John Saroff Covid sparks the growth of independent local news sites
Julia B. Chan and Kim Bui Millennials are ready to run things
Errin Haines Let’s normalize women’s leadership
An Xiao Mina 2020 isn’t a black swan — it’s a yellow canary
Mark S. Luckie Newsrooms and streaming services get cozy
Joanne McNeil Newsrooms push back against Ivy League cronyism
Charo Henríquez A new path to leadership
Bill Adair The future of fact-checking is all about structured data
Chase Davis The year we look beyond The Story
Imaeyen Ibanga Journalism gets unmasked
Cory Bergman The year after a thousand earthquakes
Alyssa Zeisler Holistic medicine for journalism
Cindy Royal J-school grads maintain their optimism and adaptability
Linda Solomon Wood Canada steps up for journalism
Rachel Glickhouse Journalists will be kinder to each other — and to themselves
Gabe Schneider Another year of empty promises on diversity
Jonas Kaiser Toward a wehrhafte journalism
Renée Kaplan Falling in love with your subscription
Mariano Blejman It’s time to challenge autocompleted journalism
Gonzalo del Peon Collaborations expand from newsrooms to the business side
Jer Thorp Fewer pixels, more cardboard
Chicas Poderosas More voices mean better information
Catalina Albeanu Publish less, listen more
Ariane Bernard Going solo is still only a path for the few
Moreno Cruz Osório In Brazil, a push for pluralism
José Zamora Walking the talk on diversity
Cherian George Enter the lamb warriors
Francesco Zaffarano The year we ask the audience what it needs
Nisha Chittal The year we stop pivoting
Burt Herman Journalists build post-Facebook digital communities
Marissa Evans Putting community trauma into context
Pia Frey Building growth through tastemakers and their communities
Ernie Smith Entrepreneurship on rails
Samantha Ragland The year of journalists taking initiative
Gordon Crovitz Common law will finally apply to the Internet
Benjamin Toff Beltway reporting gets normal again, for better and for worse
Danielle C. Belton A decimated media rededicates itself to truth
Heidi Tworek A year of news mocktails
Matt DeRienzo Citizen truth brigades steer us back toward reality
Rodney Gibbs Zooming beyond talking heads
Jim Friedlich A newspaper renaissance reached by stopping the presses
Patrick Butler Covid-19 reporting has prepared us for cross-border collaboration
Ståle Grut Network analysis enters the journalism toolbox
Ray Soto The news gets spatial
Ben Collins We need to learn how to talk to (and about) accidental conspiracists
John Garrett A surprisingly good year
Whitney Phillips Facts are an insufficient response to falsehoods
Eric Nuzum Podcasting dodged a bullet in 2020, but 2021 will be harder
Jacqué Palmer The rise of the plain-text email newsletter
Ashton Lattimore Remote work helps level the playing field in an insular industry
Annie Rudd Newsrooms grow less comfortable with the “view from above”
Nabiha Syed Newsrooms quit their toxic relationships
Taylor Lorenz Journalists will learn influencing isn’t easy
Amara Aguilar Journalism schools emphasize listening
J. Siguru Wahutu Journalists still wrongly think the U.S. is different
Joni Deutsch Local arts and music make journalism more joyous
Jennifer Choi What have we done for you lately?
Logan Jaffe History as a reporting tool
Candis Callison Calling it a crisis isn’t enough (if it ever was)
Rishad Patel From direct-to-consumer to direct-to-believers