Substack can't become part of the #Resistance

On media diets.

Even before Joy Reid signed off for the final time as an MSNBC primetime anchor on Monday night, the New York Times reported that she was “in talks to launch a new venture on Substack.”

Which her fans undoubtedly were thrilled about. (Reid, it’s worth noting, already has a Substack with more than 45,000 followers. It’s called “Joy’s House.”) I have NO doubt that if Reid launches or re-launches a “new venture” on Substack, she will wrack up hundreds of thousands of subscribers in short order.

She will also be following in the footsteps of other mainstream media types who have migrated to Substack in recent weeks and watched their subscriber counts (and their wallets!) grow.

Jim Acosta, my former colleague at CNN, launched his Substack in late January. He has more than 251,000 subscriber for

The Jim Acosta Show

as of today. Stunning.

Jen Rubin left the Washington Post in mid-January. She joined forces with former ambassador Norm Eisen to start a Substack called

The Contrarian

. That newsletter has more than 508,000 subscribers in the space of five weeks. Truly incredible.

And/but, here’s the thing: Joy Reid, Jim Acosta and The Contrarian all have a very particular spin on the news. And that spin, broadly writ, is “Donald Trump = bad.”

They are clearly part of the resistance to Trump.

Which is not a bad thing! I celebrate people who leave legacy media and have success! And I think that people like Jim, Joy, Jen and Norm believe that a) Trump is a real and direct threat to American democracy and b) they should use their platforms to say so every day.

My issue — or, really, my concern — is that Substack winds up getting type-cast as the place for the Trump resistance. A space where your views will be always be affirmed — and where, as a content creator, you can best succeed by being predictably anti-Trump.

To be clear: Substack is a LOT more than just politics. But, politics is its biggest and most active vertical. And the company has risen in the public consciousness via its political voices and coverage. So, politics matter more for Substack. No less a voice than Substack co-founder

Hamish McKenzie

declared 2024 “the Substack Election.”

Speaking of Hamish, who I have met on a few occasions, I think his goals for politics on Substack are exactly right. Here’s what he told the New York Times last fall about what he is hoping to build:

“There’s a desperate need for a quality platform with trusted voices, where honest-to-God political discussion, debate, disagreement can happen without it either disappearing into the ether or taking place on a platform where there’s constant knife fights and flame wars.”

100% that. I literally couldn’t have said it better myself.

Here’s the problem: Substack can’t control what thrives on its platform. Unless Hamish and other top leaders in the company put a hand on the scale for certain kinds of content, which I suspect they won’t do, it is going to be a pure free-for-all. Let the market decide and all that.

So, how has the market decided to date? Helpfully, Substack publishes a list of the most popular U.S. politics newsletters. Here are the 10 most popular — as judged by paid subscribers:

1. The Free Press

2. Letters from an American

3. The Bulwark

4. The Contrarian

5. Zeteo

6. MeidasTouch Network

7. Silver Bulletin

8. Racket News

9. The Borowitz Report

10. Joyce Vance

Of those 10, five — Bulwark, Contrarian, Zeteo, Meidas Touch, and Joyce Vance — are clearly anti-Tump in the bulk of their content.

One, The Free Press, could fit into a broadly conservative bin — although what Bari Weiss has built appears to me to be more a reaction to “wokeness” than an affirmation of traditional conservative viewpoints.

The other four land in harder-to-define territory. Of them, I would say only “Letters from an American” and “Silver Bulletin” are obviously coming from a center-ish place politically. Andy Borowitz skewers politics broadly but is clearly a liberal. Matt Taibbi is his own animal — and doesn’t fit into an obvious bucket, politically speaking.

The #Resistance vibes are even stronger when you look at the next 10 most popular Substack newsletters — with

Robert Reich

,

Steady

,

The Warning with Steve Schmidt

The Good in Us by Mary L. Trump

and

The Jim Acosta Show

all ranking highly.

Again — and I want to by CRYSTAL clear about this — I am not casting aspersions on ANY of these people. They all deserve huge credit for building followings. They are speaking from conviction on their views of the state of the country. That is a good thing.

Rather it is to note that the best-sellers on Substack tilt heavily in the anti-Trump/#Resistance space.

And, candidly, that worries me.

Because, for me, the BEST version of Substack is not one dominated by anti-Trump voices. Or one where anti-Trump voices are MUCH more likely to be able to make a sustainable living on the platform than people — except for a select few — who are either independent politically or conservative.

Walling oneself off from views that don’t comport with your worldview is a giant mistake. It’s why BlueSky, a social media site where liberals have flocked since Elon Musk bought Twitter, is, to my mind, a very bad thing for our discourse and our politics.

We are not going to solve — or even address — the divisions in this country by only listening, reading or paying for stuff that affirms what we already think. Retreating into safe spaces is not the answer. Assuming everyone who disagrees with you is a racist or a misogynist cretin — or both! — isn’t how this country re-finds itself.

Engaging — in the words of Hamish — in “honest-to-God political discussion” is. And the only way you do that is by reading and watching people with whom you disagree.

I am not sure how Substack solves this problem (or if they even think it is a problem). Because, again, Substack is just a platform. You can put (almost) anything you want on to it. Substack gives you the tools and lets your imagination run wild. And it seeks to create a content meritocracy where audiences choose what they like.

There’s no attempt by Substack to point people to a certain kind of content — or a certain view point. What’s happened, however, is a bit of natural selection: The majority of the most prominent voices on the platform — in politics at least — are clumped around a particular political position.

Even if Substack decided to do some curation of content to put in front of users, I am not sure how it would work. Take me. I fashion myself to be an independent news creator — calling balls and strikes no matter what uniform the batter at the plate is wearing.

But is that what I am? Plenty of people have called me a shill for Democrats. Or a shill for Trump. One man’s independent is another man’s deeply-biased partisan.

How would Substack negotiate that thicket? I can’t imagine a good solution, candidly.

I write all of this not to make Substack prioritize content like mine — or find more prominent conservative voices to bring to the platform. Rather I write it in hope. Because Substack represents a real path forward for political journalism and journalists. It is a platform with massive potential to reshape how we talk, write and think about politics.

What I fear is that it will become a place where only certain political views are tolerated. I see this in even my own comments section where people who hate Trump often drown out other voices who have differing opinions. That’s not dialogue! And it’s the opposite of the free speech that so many of those same people say they value.

We already have enough safe spaces in the world of political content. I don’t read or watch NewsMax because I already know what they are going to say about, well, everything. Ditto MSNBC.

I don’t want Substack to go down that road. Because it can be so much more than that.

Thanks for reading and, I hope, considering what I laid out above. Substack has been a savior for me and lots of other journalists. I want to preserve it as a place where all views can be heard without fear or favor.

If you want to support my efforts to build an independent news analysis site owned by no one and loyal to neither party, you can become a paid subscriber here:

Thank you.

— Chris