Snooty intellectualism VS the future of journalism
Washington Post writers are showing up in droves on Substack, and tons of intellectuals are excited
(Please read this pedantic article in the snootiest voice you can muster.)
Over the past week a dozen or more Washington Post writers have shown up on substack. Welcome. I think this is just another result of the sheer change that we’ve seen in the mass exodus away from legacy media, but it’s also, obviously, the result of a failure in the business models of mainstream media.
These good journalists from across the mainstream have made the transfer fairly seamlessly, and they’re fortunate because the United States has so many people with money, and who are highly concerned about the state of their democracy.
What we’ve seen is a sanitization of legacy media, something that’s been happening since the late nineties, and an untenable financial situation, where many of these places failed to see the writing on the wall, failed to see that their version of writing was a thing of the past. Why did this sanitization occur?
The simplest explanation is that advertisers don’t want to be on platforms that are too critical of the systems that they profit off of. It works in both directions as well. In 2023, when Elon Musk, a neo-nazi, purchased X, advertisers ran away in record numbers. It didn’t matter to Musk and his band of far right oligarchs, simply because he, and others, realize that they don’t need advertisers to make money. For Musk, it’s a machine to propagandize the world and dismantle systems that prevent him from constantly gaining money.
The complete destruction of the media machine, particularly in the United States, has led to the most significant scandal in American history essentially having no effect. The Epstein files, the fact that a pedophile has ties with nearly every wealthy business owner has led to no prosecution and has seen almost no change in Donald Trump and the Republican’s base.
But the same can be said about Israel, and the genocide in Palestine. In the eighties, it was fairly common to refer to Israel as “occupiers,” at least calling a spade a spade, but in 2026 we don’t have that same fearless quality to mainstream writers. Major scandals happened in the Trudeau era. Instead of causing an end to the career of Trudeau, he won two more elections. The man literally wore blackface and voters awarded him with another government.
(Whether this is the fault of the media, or the fault of Andrew Scheer, who was the opponent on Trudeau in 2019, is hard to say. Scheer is, at the best, an uncharismatic man with few redeeming qualities.)
Now that so many people are leaving the constraints of false premises of “objectivity”, what will happen to the media? We are not going to see millions of people suddenly subscribe to substack.
To be frank, substack is faux-intellectual twitter. It’s an endless cesspool of AI and op-eds, or it’s a place for intellectuals to be snooty. By writing op-eds. Hell, this is an op-ed.
Most people are not attracted to substack. Most people are on social media. Also, the individual subscription model is mostly untenable, since the majority of Americans and Canadians don’t have the kind of cash it takes to subscribe to every single writer that they like.
Social media is where most people are. My individual news hits reach fifty thousand people a day, plus the people who want to dig into my writing on substack (usually around 3000 people reading each article.) My videos regularly hit 200,000. Why aren’t there more people there? There are more and more, but not enough.
But we don’t make money on socials.
Okay, so what next? We have a serious problem. The more people on substack, the less money there will be to go around. The niche appeal of substack intellectualism cannot appeal to all people, and the endless flood of uninteresting, and AI content on the platform will discourage people from finding what they need. It will be harder and harder to stand out in the mess, in a similar way that people have troubles finding a truly substantive audience on Spotify. AI takes up so much space, and algorithms favour payola schemes and major label music. On Instagram, I get comments all the time from people who say “I follow you but I never see your posts, and I don’t know why.” Substack emails bypass the algorithm, but to blow up on substack you still need the algorithm to favour you. What now?
What matters now is to look at what’s next– to figure out the next move. In a speech that Blue Jay Walker has been writing (my best friend, and the editor in chief of “The Paper Rag”, an indie subscription offline-only magazine), he points to the future. Right now there are tons of “mail clubs”, but that market is becoming saturated. What’s next? Socials are seeing a slow exodus away from them, because people are tired of their phones. People don’t have money, so what is next? In his speech, which I am quoting without permission, Jay says,
“What is the logical conclusion of people’s increased distaste for the social media landscape?
Physical media.
In the cycle of culture we have a resurgence of nostalgia for the practical and tangible.
Things like CDs, paper publications, and the like are being hailed as tools that do the job without also dealing psychic damage to the user. A novel idea indeed.”
Yes, these people are moving to substack, but we also lose credibility without media companies and without ethics frameworks. I am one of the few to write an ethics framework while being a journalist on social media. Hell, there’s not a lot of indie media who write ethics frameworks in general.
I don’t know what the “next” thing is, but the clock is ticking on these individual subscription platforms. The clock is ticking on social media. I was one of the earlier journalists making original news on socials, and I’ll probably be quick to leave it as well, if my timeline works out to be correct (I’m not gonna tell you more than that.)
Hopefully the new people on substack are as rigorous as they were under the Washington Post. But also, hopefully these same excellent journalists can all find an audience, and aren’t just creating a system of circlejerking. Because yeah, they might be getting a ton of “intellectuals” and journalists to subscribe to their substack, but are they reaching real people? Because Fox News is. The Rover is. Pivot is. I know for sure that I am.
As the world changes, and people respond, it will lead to an oversaturation in these markets. But we need to start thinking about what’s next, instead of thinking about right now. Never thinking two steps ahead is what got us here in the first place.
So will we be innovative, or will we just accept irrelevance when it comes to normal people working normal jobs? What is next?
I guess we’ll find out.
My partner has told me that this article enraged her to an exceptional degree because it was written as a snooty intellectual. It’s really hard to tell when people are being satirical in writing. So, this is me explicitly telling you that I wrote this to be as insufferably snooty and intellectual as possible, while simultaneously trying to make a point. I’m trying to lampshade the Substack style. It’s like, that Paul Wells (whom I like a lot, actually) style that says nothing while seeming like it said a lot. My goal was to make you laugh. Anyways. Have a nice day.
Are you trying to defeat the snooty intellectuals? That sounds fun.
I love Snoots