We have discussed the problems with news before. And we have discussed the power of building an audience in the constantly-online age.
The confluence of these two can be summed up thus: attention is the capital of the 21st century. Media today – whether TV or on the internet – while always incentivised to hijack that attention for money, has now reached a point where it is either the direct or proximate cause of polarisation of society and its attendant problems by simplifying and packaging ‘takes’ on issues.
This is especially unfortunate because we’re living in a time where disruption, no longer just a buzzword on a startup VC pitch deck, is changing industries, jobs and norms across the board and across countries. With the potential for great benefits it brings with questions of ethics and morality we must confront, and prospect of inequality we must resolve.
I’d like to believe that today the first major step has been taken towards the way 21st century media should be.
The journalist Matt Taibbi, writer of the excellent books Griftopia, The Divide and Insane Clown President among others, has gone direct: he is moving to a reader-paid email newsletter on the publishing platform Substack.
I am excited.
Not just by the move, but by his post justifying why. He gets it.
Both the new economics:
Compensation in news media traditionally involves a reporter working for a corporation or a wealthy patron, who ostensibly paid staff with revenue from advertising and subscriptions. This used to be necessary because delivering content was expensive and required additional labor: design, printing, distribution, marketing, etc.
Distribution is instant now, design can be automated, and there are no printing costs. The logical endgame is cutting out middle steps and having journalists work directly for readers.
and the more important imperatives:
The media business as constructed is expert at mass-generating binary streams of hot takes and talking points, and selling ads to a public engaged by them. It’s great business: cable profits have soared. But it’s a lousy system for getting to the bottom of difficult subjects, and boy do we have a lot of those to deal with
There have been independent political bloggers before, most notably Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Dish, which was also paid-subscriber model. But that was seven years and a lifetime ago. I hope this is what launches the new new media.