Digest 7/19/2021

Mastheads on Substack, a future for local news, remembering Dawn Foster, and more.

SUBSTACKS ARE STAFFING UP

Last Tuesday, Matt Yglesias’s newsletter Slow Boring put up a job posting for a researcher/internship position ($15/hr, full time or part time). 

This will not be Yglesias’s first staff member. Previously, Marc Novicoff, a Dartmouth student, interned at Slow Boring from November 2020 to June 2021. Yglesias also works with editorial assistant Claire Cantrell, and contributors Simon Bazelon and David Schleicher. It’s interesting to see a personality-driven newsletter slowly acquire a masthead. 

Yglesias is one of the few Substackers who was recruited as part of Substack Pro, and one of the even fewer who was up front about the advance they received — $250,000. But Yglesias will reach the end of his first year in November, which is when the flip switches and he’s back to earning his own subscription money like the rest of us plebs. But I was curious if Substack had any role in subsidizing his growing staff. 

“No there’s no extra Substack Pro money coming into this,” he tells Study Hall over email. “I’m just trying to reinvest some of the revenue into making the product as good as possible.”

However, there’s precedent for Substack being hands-on about the staffing decisions of their big creators. Hunter Harris, who writes the newsletter Hung Up, told me in a previous interview that Substack helped connect her with a copy editor, editors, and a graphic designer — and was also fronting those costs. Anne Helen Petersen, the author behind Culture Study, wrote in her first newsletter that she was working with an editor, and also looking for copy editors, fact checkers, designers, and photographers. (Petersen didn’t respond to my request for comment about whether or not she filled those roles and how they were being paid.) 

“Sometimes we’ll make introductions, sometimes we’ll cover or subsidize the cost,” a spokesperson for Substack tells Study Hall in an email when asked about Substack’s role in their growing publications. “Sometimes writers are looking for an editor or researcher, other times they’ve needed podcast engineers, translators, or social media managers. In every case though, the staffing and editorial decisions are up to the writer.”

The method varies, but the trend is clear: Personalities may dominate Substack now, but as they grow, a team inevitably grows with them. Judd Legum, Bari Weiss, and Zeynep Tufekci have all paid writers or have a staff, and Joshi Hermann is hiring staff to expand into multiple publications. Traditional publication structures are trojan-horsing themselves into the subscription model — so I’m afraid this is certainly not the last time you’ll be reading about Substack in this newsletter. 

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PIVOT TO LOCAL NEWS

In fact, you’re going to be reading about Substack again right now! But just for the next few sentences. Back in June, Substack announced the winners of Substack Local, a million dollar initiative benefitting twelve selected independent writers working in local news across the U.S, Romania, Africa, the UK, and more. Winners received benefits like mentorship from experienced journalists, access to specialized services including design and business strategy, and cash advances of up to $100,000. However, this support — while effective — isn’t exactly sustainable. Local news needs a more long-term investment in order to rise from the ashes, and it appears Indiegraf is attempting to facilitate it. 

While I didn’t get responses from a few contacts I reached out to at the publication partnership start-up, they most recently joined forces with Bushwick Daily, an online publication serving northern Brooklyn. The partnership allowed for the hires of editor in chief Nicole Allen Viana and associate publisher Jackson Schroeder, as well as social media marketing intern Isabel Beer and journalism intern Paige Cromley. The support also allowed Bushwick Daily to launch a new subscriber benefits program which gives access to a new website with members-only features, like commenting. 

Indiegraf announced its intention to grow to over 50 community news outlets by the end of 2021 back in May, and has helped grow 37 news outlets across North America since its launch two years ago. These include Sask Dispatch (focused on the Canadian province of Saskatchewan), Bloc By Block News (a media cooperative serving Maryland), and The Palm Springs Post (a newsletter based in southern California).

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REMEMBERING DAWN FOSTER

Jacobin staff writer Dawn Foster died last week at the age of 34. News of her passing was announced by friend and Novara co-editor James Butler, who says her death was related to her long-term illness. Foster had previously written about her epilepsy diagnosis, and frequently advocated for openness surrounding chronic illness. 

In addition to chronic illness, Foster wrote for outlets like Jacobin, The Guardian, and The Independent about topics like the structural policies that fail unhoused communities, and justice for those who are discriminated against due to their race, disability, sexuality, or gender identity. She also authored two books: Lean Out, a critique of Sheryl Sandberg’s corporate “1% feminism,” and Where Will We Live? about the UK housing crisis.

Tributes to the writer poured in across social media. 

“I will miss her kindness, and I will miss her seriousness, and I will miss her unerring eye for ego and folly, and her sense of what was, simply, right,” Butler wrote on Twitter. “Over the past couple of days I haven’t been able to shake the sense she had so much more left to give us.”

Others, like writer Rebecca Johnson, pointed to some of their favorite pieces by Foster, which, in addition to her political writing, included this reflection on food and family.

Tributes to Foster can be sent to [email protected], and Butler points those who wish to send flowers to instead donate to causes Foster was passionate about, like Dogs Trust.

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COMINGS AND GOINGS

— Emily Burack is joining Hey Alma as deputy editor.

— Darcy Wilder is joining new Gawker as senior social media editor.

— Azure Gilman is leaving Vice News, where she was a senior editor.

— Parul Sehgal is leaving New York Times Books to join the New Yorker as a staff writer — along with a few other new hires.

— Julie Kosin joined Vulture as senior TV editor. She was previously at Elle.  

 — Gabriel Snyder, former New York Observer media reporter, has launched a competing media newsletter, Off The Record. Now you must decide where your loyalties lie. 

— Taylyn Washington-Harmon is joining Men’s Health as health editor for print and digital.

— Caroline Haskins is departing BuzzFeed to join Business Insider as a senior reporter covering surveillance, AI, and algorithmic decision-making.

 — The Daily Beast top editor Noah Shachtman is joining Rolling Stone as editor in chief.

— Rosemary Donahue is leaving Allure to join Health Magazine as senior features editor. 

— Josh Freedom du Lac is departing The Washington Post to join CNN as executive editor of the national digital team. 

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EVERYTHING ELSE

—  Substack is launching Substack Grow, a free six-session Zoom course to help budding writers build followings and earn their first $1000 from subscriptions to their newsletters. The Information reports that Substack is implementing the program in hopes of competing with rising competition in the subscription business model space, like Facebook’s Bulletin and new media company Puck. 

— This New York Times editor’s note is doing a lot of work. 

— Social media consultant Rachel Karten put together the results of a survey about compensation in the social media industry for her newsletter Link In Bio, from coordinators all the way to directors. In general, pay increases with time in the field and title, but are well below salaries for counterparts in similar fields like marketing. 

— ESPN host Maria Taylor is reportedly in talks for a deal with NBC after audio of disparaging remarks made by colleague Rachel Nichols leaked. In the audio, Nichols can be heard claiming that Taylor’s success at ESPN is due to her race. ESPN subsequently dropped Nichols from the NBA Finals sideline, and has reportedly offered Taylor a new contract of three million dollars a year.

— A good tweet.