They don’t teach this in journalism school
Thinking about Substack from a journalist’s perspective changes everything
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the growth of Substack as a journalistic platform in the past year. And yes, there’s a certain irony in writing about Substack on my own Substack. But most of the talk seems centered around the impact on the business of journalism, the few controversial writers on the platform who are full of sound and fury, or the impact of this on consumers, there has been less talk on what this looks like for journalists on the ground doing it. So this edition is a collection of notes and thoughts on this idea - starting with some reporting I began doing earlier this year
HAMBURG, N.Y. - It’s the night before the 2021 NFL draft.
The back wall of the taproom of Hamburg Brewing Company is lined with small groups of football fans. The room itself is gorgeous – a peaked roof, shiny wooden floors, a massive stone fireplace in the center of the room with openings on both sides, a series square windows on the western wall that let in the spring sunset. It’s an unseasonably warm evening, and there’s a decent crowd enjoying the pond-side patio – a combination of a nice weekday evening in the Buffalo suburbs and with the optimism of what then looked like the end of the pandemic.
At one table in the corner, Mathew Fairburn, who at the time covered the Bills for The Athletic, is talking with a reader about the team’s plans for this weekend’s draft. A table away, Del Reid — the literal inventor of #BillsMafia — is sharing the origin story of his company, 26 Shirts. Over here, Jim Monos is talking across two tables, telling stories of his time in the NFL as the Bills director of player personnel and as a scout with the Saints and the Eagles.
This is a knowledgeable group of football fans, even by Buffalo standards. When someone brings up the Bills’ second and third round draft picks in 20167 they don’t need to pull out their phones to know who was taken. (If you can pull the names Reggie Ragland and Adolphus Washington without the help of a search engine, this is your crew).
Tyler Dunne stands in the middle of it all, wearing a blue Hamburg Brewing Company shirt, holding a glass of Louie IPA, shaking hands, introducing people, handing out small rectangular drink tickets that subscribers are exchanging for free beers, sincerely thanking everyone for coming out.
Everyone here is a subscriber to Go LongNFL newsletter Dunne launched on Substack in November. They pay $7 a month or $70 a year to read the long-form features that made Dunne one of the most popular and successful NFL writers.
Waitstaff are clearing empty glasses, bringing out baskets of the brew pub’s solid Beef on Weck. At one point, a manager works his way back with small clear plastic cups filled with samples of Hoptomium, their signature (and delightfully hoppy) IPA that was not on tap tonight but is Dunne’s favorite and so they broke open a special stash to share.
“To Go Long,” one subscriber said raising his plastic cup of Hoptonium, and we all toasted a Substack newsletter with our IPAs.
A lot of the conversations at this event are about the Zoom happy hours that Dunne hosts weekly with a current, future or former NFL player or executive. These off-the-record, subscription-only chats are popular among the subscribers here. On the bench that runs along the back while, behind where everyone is hanging out, there are seven small stacks of Go Long-branded sweatshirts. They’re free to new subscribers, and Dunne made damn sure that you didn’t leave without giving you the chance at taking one.
Event planning and hosting? Merchandising?
They don’t teach you this at journalism school.
In a 2016 book chapter that traces the history of American Journalism, scholar John Nerone wrote:
What is more unusual about journalism as a profession is its lack of independence. In theory, practitioners in the classic professions, like medicine or the clergy, contain the means of production in their heads and hands, and therefore do not have to work for a company or an employer. They can draw their income directly from their clients or patients. Because the professionals hold knowledge, moreover, their clients are dependent on them. Journalists hold knowledge, but it is not theoretical in nature; one might argue that the public depends on journalists in the same way that patients depend on doctors, but in practice a journalist can serve the public usually only by working for a news organization, which can fire her or him at will. Journalists income depends on on the public, but on the employing news organization, which often derives the large majority of its revenue from advertisers.
Casey Newton wrote about his first yearpublishing Platformer on Substack:
The result is a job that feels more durable, and sustainable, than any other employment I’ve had. In the past, to lose my job might require only a bad quarter in the ad market, the loss of an ally in upper management, or the takeover of my company by some indifferent telecom company. Today, I can really only lose my job if thousands of people decide independently to “fire” me. As a result, I’ve never felt more empowered to cover the issues I find most meaningful: the fraught, unpredictable collisions between big tech platforms and the world around them. …
One thing I struggle with is that if I decided to investigate something, it generally has to be something I can wrap up quickly: every minute I spend reporting is a minute I’m not writing, and I write four newsletters a week. That tilts the balance of the newsletter away from original journalism more than I’d like, and it’s clear that original journalism is the thing that people are most excited to support financially. Reconciling those two things is going to be a focus for me in year two. …
Cons: Having to do bookkeeping and accounting — there is so much more paperwork than there used to be. Not having a copyeditor for the daily newsletter — thanks to all of you who point out typos, which I endeavor to fix as quickly as possible. Most of all, in this line of work you can’t really afford to have a bad few months the way you can at a staff job. (Ask me about my 2017!) The business only works when I’m working.
What’s interesting to me is how all-encompassing this work is for Dunne, Newton and the other reporters doing this kind of work. They don’t have the institutional backing or support or reputation to fall back on that Nerone describes. From the exciting (reporting what they want, hosting events) to the mundane (paperwork, financial projections), these publications are projects of one.
Whether or not Substack itself remains a thing remains to be seen. But this growth surely indicates a hunger among audiences to connect with reporters outside of the traditional structure.
And as a journalism educator, it makes me realize that our curricula and our teaching need to prepare students for a career that may look like this.
The Other 51
Episode 153: A Snake Did It with Stuart Turton
Stuart Turton, the best-selling author of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and The Devil and the Dark Water, joins Brian to talk about writing, plot, Agatha Christie and more. A former journalist (among many other jobs), Stuart wrote two of the Moritz family’s favorite books of the past three years. Among other topics, Stuart and Brian discuss:
How, exactly, did he plot out insanely intricate plot of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle?
The amount of research he did for The Devil and the Dark Water. You’ll learn something you never would have guessed about a ship’s poop deck.
Episode 152: Bus Bubble with Tania Elizabeth
Grammy and Juno-award winning musician Tania Elizabeth joins Brian to talk about the writing and recording of her upcoming album and more. Tania’s been a touring musician for nearly her entire life, and has spent the past seven years playing fiddle in the Avett Brothers. Before that, she was a founding member of The Duhks and toured extensively both on her own and as an accompanist. In 2021, she recorded her first solo record in nearly 10 years and hopes to release it in 2022. Tania and Brian discuss:
The difference between a song and a fiddle tune
Tania’s songwriting process, and the importance of vulnerability in her art
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