Welcome to TheAntiSubstack
Is this newsletter really going to use Substack to criticize Substack?
I have a set of provocative perspectives that I want to share with the world. I believe we can build a community among people who feel the same way. Clearly I need to start a Substack.
If you’re not familiar with Substack, it’s a platform for email newsletters. It manages my mailing list, and will allow me at some point to charge subscription fees. It’s quite trendy, with journalists leaving their jobs to start Substacks. It promises to reinvent media. But I think those reinventions are going to be bad for the world.
Plenty of people are happy to talk smack about a social-media-style tech startup. That’s not what we’re going to do here. I want to dig more deeply into how the site will be used, and how that might affect social dynamics. I want to do that with respect for the site’s founders and writers—hey, they’re willing to gamble and try something new!—but some healthy skepticism too. Maybe, if early Facebook had had a skeptic community…
What are my qualifications for starting such a conversation? I’ve been a journalist and author for 27 years. I freelance full time. I’ve had website and blog for most of that career. I’m by no means part of the media establishment, although I’ve written, edited, and published various forms of media in a small Montana town. I’m a ravenous media consumer.
If you’re interested in this conversation, please sign up! I promise to send some newsletters and/or start some message-boards soon.