In the last week or so, trad media has noticed something. People are paying to subscribe to independent newsletters.

This has been the general reaction: 😱😱😱‼️ 

The fact that independent newsletters can be a sustainable, even profitable business is not breaking news. There’s a whole conference devoted to hacking that particular path to solvency. But suddenly the big media finger that points at all the reasons their own business model might be struggling is aiming at independent journalists. Or, as Town & Country dismissively terms it, “a hustle."

The New York Times, too, jumped on the bandwagon with a pearl-clutchy observation that people are – GASP – spending more money than they realized on newsletter subscriptions.

This from a publication that charges me $225 a year. (A subscription I value and consider well-spent money, but I feel the same way about Links I Would GChat You If We Were Friends, Journalists Pay Themselves, Court Watch and Culture Study.) Do I ever look at my media budget and decide I need to trim? Sure. I regularly unsub from newsletters I find myself not reading, but that’s also true of magazines. Last year I made the decision to give up The Atlantic.

Friend of Project C Ryan Kellett took this to a smart extreme, crowd-sourcing suggestions from his LinkedIn audience to help him allocate $150 to subscribe a slate of independent creator journalists, essentially re-making his media diet.

The storyline that sees subscribing to independent newsletters as somehow chipping away at trad media, and thereby REAL journalism, is one rooted in fear. The same fear I wrote about at the beginning of this year around who gets to be called a journalist. Journalism, no matter the source, is not a zero sum game. There is room for the amazing work coming out of dynamic news organizations with long traditions of investigative and enterprise journalism. There is also room for upstarts who are covering the news gaps those organizations have left for consumers. We know this because consumers are, as they are wont to do, voting with their wallets.

Trad media SHOULD be asking provocative questions about what this all means, but instead of asking “How do we get people to stop paying them and start paying us again?,” maybe the question should be: “Why are we not the choice? What is it readers are finding in The Handbasket that they aren’t getting from The New York Times?” Or, “How might we recognize these indie journalists as fellow travelers on the same path and partner with them?”

There are questions we who are true believers in creator-model journalism should be asking, too: How do we develop standards for what qualifies as rigorous independent journalism? How to we bring the creator model path into undergraduate journalism programs so students who are worried about setting off on a career in a troubled industry see an alternate path? How do we evolve the business model to bundle and make this space more discoverable, navigable and affordable for consumers?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Add a comment below or just hit reply.

the latest

• Chuck Todd launched his newsletter this week with what appears to be a PDF made on my circa 1993 Dell laptop using desktop publishing software. Is it ironic? Not based on the content, which commenters agree is what they want from the former Meet the Press moderator, but also say is nearly impossible to read.

• Kara Swisher is winning at the the brand-building game, but let’s not confuse her with an independent creator journalist.

• The Reuters Institute shares lessons from platform-driven news outlets like RocaNews about how they’re reaching young audiences.

• A new study from Pew, unpacked in this cogent NiemanLab piece, introduces the idea that in 2025, we are all our own wire service editors, deciding on the fly what is news.

• Torched’s Alissa Walker was the featured subject matter (transit!) guest on last night’s excellent John Mulaney Netflix talk show Everybody’s Live.

  

know things

• ICYMI: A panel from Stanford’s Rebele Symposium brings together Peter Hamby, Kyla Scanlon and the amazing Matt Kiser to talk about what legacy media outlets can learn from news creators. Especially here for Matt’s take on how he builds trust with his audience.

• WordPress, the platform that launched a gazillion blogs, is coming for Substack. Paved weighs in with a side-by-side comparison. Also, “I don’t think Substack is cool,” says Chris Black on Semafor’s Mixed Signals podcast.

do something cool

• The Philadelphia Inquirer is taking a page out of the creator playbook, hiring for a social video host who will “become a leading face of our short-form video content on social media platforms.”