(2020-11-25) Chang The Substackerati

Clio Chang: The Substackerati. Will Substack replicate the patterns of marginalization found across the media industry, or will it help people locked out of the dominant media sphere to flourish? To a large extent, the answer depends on whether or not Substack’s founders believe they’re in the publishing business. When we spoke, they were adamant that Substack is a platform, not a media company.

It’s a bit of a brain twister: Substack, eager to attract customers over Mailchimp or WordPress, has begun to look like it’s reverse engineering a media company. But all the while, its founders insist that they simply provide a platform. By not acknowledging the ways in which they are actively encouraging (and discouraging) certain people to use Substack, and the ways they benefit monetarily from doing so, they obscure their role as publishers. As Study Hall’s Allegra Hobbs put it over the summer, “It seems the creators of Substack, in their zeal to become the future of media, are trying to have it both ways—to keep an appropriate editorial distance while also actively supporting writers beyond merely providing a space to publish.

Fear that the new A-List will be the same as the old one.