Legacy Media is in Desperation Mode, and That's a Good Thing. Here's Why.
The fall of mainstream media, the birthing of a new economic engine, and the free exchange of ideas that matter
The publications I freelance for often challenge the status quo of the media industry. My own publication, Classically Cultured, proudly calls Substack its homebase. The publications I write for and host my own work at are under constant, viscious, ad hominem attacks from mainstream media sites. And these baseless attacks are growing. Why?
Because sites like Substack challenge legacy media. Though legacy media like The Atlantic and Vox will tell you the imminent threat is media platforms like Substack, the imminent threat is actually their own intentional lack of understanding as to why their news sites and media blogs are failing.
Legacy media is clearly in desperation mode, and that’s a good thing. Here’s why.
The Dinosaurs
The term “dinosaur” in media culture means that which refuses to change with the times and is therefore about to be snuffed out by some impending metaphorical comet. Let’s take a look at a few of legacy media’s potential future dinosaurs and how they are doing as of late.
Condé Nast, one of the biggest global media companies in existence since 1909 is currently rolling out layoffs to its employees. Chances are, if you buy a glossy mag from a supermarket, Condé Nast is the one who published it. It’s the parent company of many media outlets, including the New Yorker. That magazine is currently experiencing rounds of layoffs it has generally escaped in the past due to the long running time and historic cultural significance of the publication.
Veteran sites like Vox recently announced cuts to its employees, giving a soft ad market and competition from social media as reasons for the downsize.
As seasoned media platforms continue to shrink throughout America, it is happening on a global scale as well. Canada’s CBC recently reported laying off 10% of its workforce.
While these sites often blame SEO “volatility” or the unpredictability of the tech sector as reasons for their current struggles, research into the matter tells a different story.
If they were honest, the number one reason they would list in their press releases in regards to layoffs is the rampant distrust people have in the media right now.
Writer
highlights in his Substack publication that trust in mass media has been experiencing a significant decline since the ‘70s. According to the Gallup poll he highlights, trust in mainstream media is at a significant low, with just 32% of those polled having a “great deal or fair amount of trust” in media.All of this smoke and mirrors among a changing technological landscape reminds me of my first years in the professional music industry. While making my own way as an independent artist, I was shocked to find record labels still trying to make CDs a thing as individuals of all ages and socio-economic backgrounds stood in lines to purchase the latest iPhone edition. Why would they need CDs for their cars when they had all the music they could ever want inside their pocket?
Aside from news outlets, media sites, and the stalling traditional entertainment industry as a whole, creative literary publications aren’t any better off. Their steady decline came to a precipice in the ‘90s, and sparked one of American literary culture’s most brilliant essays ever written, “Can Poetry Matter?” by esteemed poet Dana Gioia.
His piece, published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1991, created a welcomed passionate discussion among readers. “Can Poetry Matter?” became the piece that received the most “public response” ever for the magazine.
If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it because it offers great insight still highly relevant today.
He explores the question, “Is there a place for poetry to be part of modern American mainstream culture?”
His response is, in true Dana Gioia fashion, a bullseye. One of the key points he expands on is this:
“Like subsidized farming that grows food no one wants, a poetry industry has been created to serve the interests of the producers and not the consumers. And in the process the integrity of the art has been betrayed. Of course, no poet is allowed to admit this in public.”
In other words, over the past several decades, poetry has been written for other poets (i.e., pre-approved, ivory tower poets), not readers. Gioia continues:
“Consequently, the energy of American poetry which was once directed outward, is now increasingly focused inward.”
So how does Gioia propose literary magazines remedy their inconsequential place among artistic mediums consumed?
“To regain poetry’s readership one must begin by meeting [William Carlos] Williams’s challenge to find what “concerns many men,” not simply what concerns poets.”
This is exactly what Substack has done. This is exactly why Substack is experiencing such success.
The Comet
While struggling veteran media outlets fumble marketing campaigns, waste dollars on social media ad spend, and lose readership, innovative, visionary platforms like Substack continue to grow.
Their framework is cutting-edge. They’ve embraced and improved upon the micro-subscription method that has all but relegated any other way of paying to the archives of history. And they’ve rolled out a host of incentives for both readers and writers that foster meaningful relationships between content provider and content receiver.
The platform has both fresh, independent writers and seasoned pillars of the writing community who love Substack so much they now commit a good portion of their publishing time to that platform alone, as opposed to just dividing their time publishing freelance pieces on legacy media platforms.
One of those veteran writers is
(brother of poet Dana Gioia), who is a prolific writer and music critic, and an all around impressive cultural savant.In August 2022, he announced on his Substack publication
that he would be publishing his latest book, Music to Raise the Dead, on the Substack platform in serialized format. He gave many (good) reasons for his decision. But what made him so faithful to this recently developed platform that is so new to the overlapping frontiers of technology and publishing that they are building the platform as writers are publishing on it?After meeting with Substack pioneer Chris Best, Gioia offered some thoughts:
“A few days ago, I had a chance to sit down with Substack’s founders while they were visiting Austin. I told them that I was initially skeptical about the platform, but a moment arrived when I finally grasped the way Substack empowered me.
“What made the difference for you?” CEO Chris Best asked.
"The lightbulb went on when I saw that Substack was an accelerating platform,” I replied. “I initially thought that I would gain some early subscribers and then growth would flatten. In fact, the opposite occurred—my subscriber growth and impact have accelerated over time. I had no idea this would happen, or in such a dramatic way.”
A New Economic Engine for Culture
Substack has its own publication on the platform as well. While Gioia offers concrete evidence as to why he believes in the platform,
offers an abstract view of Substack’s philosophical principles in a piece titled, “An Algorithm for Quality.” Gioia’s thoughts, coupled with Best’s principled business approach, offers a well-rounded outlook for what’s to come on, as the Honest Broker puts it, this accelerating platform:“We’ve set up our business model so that, in order to succeed, we have to serve the best version of you. We are committed to building technologies that cater to the version of you that sits at the breakfast table on a Sunday morning and thinks carefully about what you’ll spend the next 30 minutes reading. We’ll be serving the version of you that is excited to financially support the writers you trust. We win when subscribers are happy. Our business model succeeds when you spend time with the work that you value the most; the work that helps you grow and progress; the work that helps you fall deeper in love.
This is the stuff we’re talking about when we say we’re building a new economic engine for culture. It’s not a perfect system, but it is new, and it allows a kind of work to thrive that is different and better than what wins on other platforms.We are not against algorithms. We’ll enthusiastically use algorithms, or AI, or any other technology we can get our hands on, as long as we can use them to serve the human ends that we care about. For readers, that means letting you decide what you read as the best version of yourself—helping you take back your mind.”
This “new economic engine for culture,” this fiery comet of cultural passion is obliterating old ways that no longer work. Legacy media, with all its stubbornness and cavalier mindset, is an integral part of the old way that is relentlessly clunky. And it downright refuses to heed the information the market is giving it. Though Substack is participating in one of the free market’s most important attributes, creative destruction, legacy media, in their intensely concrete-bound way of thinking, thinks it’s them in particular Substack is after.
Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Still, legacy media’s ad hominem attacks fostering bandwagon logical fallacy among what’s left of its readers continues.
Economic Engine by way of Philosophical Revolution
Legacy media acts as an insider’s club that clearly serves the increasingly desperate hands that feed it. Substack acts as a Stoa, a meeting place for the best of ourselves focused on nourishment of the soul and enrichment of the mind.
Engraved on Stoic philosopher Seneca’s tomb is the phrase, “Who is minding the stoa?”
One could make the argument, Substack CEO Chris Best is minding ours in the 21st century.
While much of legacy media serves the bottom line and the base versions of ourselves, Substack serves its own principles of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, free trade, and innovation. And a big way it does this is by fostering meaningful relationships with its writers and readers.
Aristotelian contemplation focuses on looking outward and into the laws of nature for answers as opposed to an isolated, inward contemplative approach. So too has Substack embraced its Aristotelian roots and become a cultural hub celebrating what “concerns many men,” of different backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences. And its employees utilize their user-friendly, innovative platform to foster connection and community based on these many different concerns and interests.
As legacy media ponders why Substack is growing, the answer is right in front of them. And it is further highlighted by mainstream media’s lack of it on their own part. Substack is having such great success because the company is acting in accordance with its nature; in accordance with the very essence of what a company focused on communication should embody.
Contrary to en vogue belief, humans, by nature, crave the free exchange of ideas, open communication, and the written word. One only needs to look to history for evidence to support these facts. Since day one, humans have been figuring out how to talk to each other and how to economize communication to better their relationships, communities, and learn from each other. Every flourishing culture, from Ancient Greece to the Age of Reason, was fueled by open debate, clear communication, and an insatiable appetite for curiosity.
However when the written word, or any other equally important medium, has historically been distorted, manipulated, and controlled, culture, and therefore people, have suffered immensely. An introductory look at the governments and their agencies involved with censorship, control of media, and the spreading of propaganda paints a grim picture, from Soviet Russia and Communist China to the Third Reich.
Legacy media spends far too much time writing hit pieces on competition rather than adopting the same life-affirming values and principles as Substack to fuel their own publications. While they censor voices and attempt to distort reality, Substack champions open discourse. While they butcher the written language, Substack writers are creating some of the most eloquent, valuable content I’ve ever read. And while Substack writers and readers learn from each other and foster community, legacy media continues to participate in the same cutthroat tactics that got them into their current mess in the first place.
When taking into account the big picture of it all, from the bloody history of the brutalization of language and communication to legacy media’s rise and fall and the telling success of inventive platforms like Substack, one’s aim, one’s zoomed-in bullseye of a vision should become clear.
Visit legacy media sites to study the past. Join the Substack community to be a part of the future.
We are so glad you are here.
An excellent summary of our current predicament... and the disruptive solution that @Substack provides for curious minds willing to pull back the curtain and see the world beyond partisan narrative shaping. Kudos!
Thank you for writing this, Rebecca! I learned a lot from your essay about Substack as a medium.
As a reader, I strongly prefer print versions of anything I read (with a red pen in my hand to underline, write questions in the margins, and otherwise "dialogue" with the content). For example, even while reading pieces such as this one online, if I find it of value to think about more deeply, then I print it out and write on it while re-reading it. My handwriting is far faster and more accurate than my typing, but I also retain content much better when I physically see it all before me and write on it.
As a writer, though, you have persuaded me to look into this medium as one possible outlet at some point for at least some of my briefer work.