Month: November 2024

My advice to any writer looking to start a new site based on the newsletter model would be to consider Substack *last*, not first.

Anil Dash, “Don’t Call It a Substack”:

We constrain our imaginations when we subordinate our creations to
names owned by fascist tycoons. Imagine the author of a book
telling people to “read my Amazon”. A great director trying to
promote their film by saying “click on my Max”. That’s how much
they’ve pickled your brain when you refer to your own work and
your own voice within the context of their walled garden. There is
no such thing as “my Substack”, there is only your writing, and a
forever fight against the world of pure enshittification.

I am upset by the above, but only insofar as I’m jealous that I had never thought to make the analogy to an author telling people to “read my Amazon”. A publication on Substack is no more “a Substack” than a blog on WordPress is “a WordPress”. It’s really quite a nifty — but devious — trick that Substack has pulled to make this parlance a thing.

Substack is, just as a reminder, a political project made by
extremists with a goal of normalizing a radical, hateful agenda by
co-opting well-intentioned creators’ work in service of
cross-promoting attacks on the vulnerable. You don’t have to take
my word for it; Substack’s CEO explicitly said they won’t ban
someone who is explicitly spouting hate, and when confronted with
the rampant white supremacist propaganda that they are profiting
from on their site, they took down… four of the Nazis. Four.
There are countless more now, and they want to use your email
newsletter to cross-promote that content and legitimize it. Nobody
can ban the hateful content site if your nice little newsletter is
on there, too, and your musings for your subscribers are all the
cover they need.

I know quite a few people whose opinions I admire who feel the same way as Dash here. I’ll disagree. I think Substack sees itself as a publishing tool and platform. They’re not here to promote any particular side. It makes no more sense for them to refuse to publish someone for being too right-wing than it would for WordPress or Medium or, say, GitHub or YouTube. Substack, I think, sees itself like that.

You might disagree. Like I said, I know a bunch of good, smart people who see Substack like Dash does, and refuse to pay for any publication on Substack’s platform because of their “Hey we’re just a neutral publishing platform, not an editor, let alone a censor” stance. What I can say, personally, is that I read and pay for several publications on Substack, and for the last few weeks I’ve tried using their iOS app (more on this in a moment), and I’ve never once seen a whiff of anything even vaguely right-wing, let alone hateful. Not a whiff. If it’s there, I never see it. If I never see it, I don’t care.1

What I object to isn’t their laissez faire approach to who they allow to publish on their platform, but rather how they present all publications. People do call the publications on Substack “Substacks”. And Substack publications do all look the same, most of them right down to that telltale serif typeface, Spectral,2 which is kerned so loosely it looks like teeth in need of orthodontia. It’s not an ugly font, per se, but it is very distinctive, which contributes, I think significantly, to the blurring of the branding line between Substack publications as discrete standalone independent entities or as mere sections under “Substack” as an umbrella publication.

Substack, very deliberately, has from the get-go tried to have it both ways. They say that publications on their platform are independent voices and brands. But they present them all as parts of Substack. They all look alike, and they all look like “Substack”. I really don’t get why any writer trying to establish themselves independently would farm out their own brand this way. It’s the illusion of independence.

I absolutely despise that a Substack publication’s home page is, typically, nothing more than a sign-up field for your email address to get the publication by email, and a small “No thanks” link to actually read the damn thing. Half the time when I see that page, I just close the tab out of spite. In what world is “No thanks” a good link to convey the meaning “Let me read the thing I came here to read”?

Substack’s app, along with the company’s home page, defaults to presenting itself as a Twitter-like short-form posting platform. As if what we need right now is another Twitter-like platform. But especially: why would anyone want to participate in a social platform tied to one specific publishing platform? It doesn’t make any sense to me, as a reader, nor do I see the appeal to writers on the platform. It only makes sense strategically from Substack’s own perspective. If, as a writer, your feedback and social interaction with your audience is tied to Substack’s own social graph, your publication is tied to Substack, too. It’s so transparently a lock-in play that it’s almost hard to object to it. It’s right there on the tin. But it’s not hard at all to just not use it.

Substack no longer even hosts a majority of the newsletter-style writers I subscribe to. Casey Newton moved Platformer from Substack to Ghost in January. Craig Calcaterra moved his excellent baseball-focused-but-with-heavy-dashes-of-politics-and-pop-culture Cup of Coffee from Substack to Beehiiv in January as well.3 Molly White runs Citation Needed on Ghost. My newest paid subscription is to CNN expat Oliver Darcy’s new media-industry focused Status, for which he chose Beehiiv. And of course there’s my friend and Dithering co-host Ben Thompson, whose Stratechery, running on his own platform Passport, not only long predates Substack but served as their model to replicate. (Substack’s pitch deck was “Stratechery in a box.”) All of these sites look distinctive, with their own brand. All of them offer much better subscription and delivery management interfaces than Substack.

My advice to any writer looking to start a new site based on the newsletter model would be to consider Substack last, not first. Not because Substack is a Nazi bar, which I don’t think it is at all, but simply because there are clearly better options, and the company’s long term goal is clearly platform lock-in.

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Sara Fischer, reporting for Axios:

Apple has started selling its own advertising inventory for Apple
News, two sources familiar with the effort told Axios. It’s
pitching new ad units that it hopes will maximize revenue for
itself and its publishing partners. […]

Publishers will get a 70% cut of the ad revenue sold by Apple
within their articles.
They will get a percentage of the ad revenue sold by Apple
within the Apple News feed, dependent on engagement with their
content.
Apple News publishers will continue to receive 100% of the
revenue from the advertising that they sell against their
content in the app.

Apple News+ is a really good product. Scanning its main Today tab in the morning has become my modern-day equivalent of scanning the front page of a printed newspaper — a way to get a sense of what’s going on in world news. There’s a level of editorial curation and presentation in Apple News that I don’t think has a peer. Apple News itself doesn’t publish or report anything, but there’s clearly a talented, level-headed editorial team that is picking and choosing the most important and most interesting (which are often very different things) stories from a wide variety of sources. So maybe a better analogy to the bygone era of print isn’t scanning the front page of a newspaper, but rather stopping at a good big-city newsstand where you could scan the front pages of a slew of newspapers from around the country (and world).

I don’t look to Apple News for anything related to tech. I definitely want to do that via RSS (which for me means NetNewsWire), the web (Safari), and social media. But for national, world, and general interest news, Apple News is really good. I don’t know what it’s like without a News+ subscription, but with one, it’s truly excellent. And a News+ subscription gets you access to a bunch of great publications with paywalls on the web.

If you cemented your opinion of Apple News years ago and tuned out, you should give it a fresh look — especially if you have a “free” News+ subscription via Apple One.

But, my god, the ads suck — low-rent and highly repetitive. I posted screen recordings over the summer illustrating this. It seems like recently, though, I’ve seen fewer ads, and they’ve gotten less repetitive. I just spent a few minutes now perusing the Today tab while writing this post, and I read a bunch of articles without seeing any ads at all. For me at least, the Apple News ad experience seems to be getting better already. But there’s still so much room for improvement.

Whenever I write about this, some readers will comment that, to their minds, a paid subscription like Apple News+ should bestow a completely ad-free experience. That’s how streaming video and music subscriptions tend to work, but even there — as I just posted regarding Disney+ — many people are choosing lower-priced streaming subscriptions subsidized by ads. The economics for ad-free news just don’t work, and never have. News+ isn’t like TV+, where Apple owns or has paid for the rights to all of the content.

 ★ 

Sara Fischer, reporting for Axios:

Apple has started selling its own advertising inventory for Apple
News, two sources familiar with the effort told Axios. It’s
pitching new ad units that it hopes will maximize revenue for
itself and its publishing partners. […]

Publishers will get a 70% cut of the ad revenue sold by Apple
within their articles.
They will get a percentage of the ad revenue sold by Apple
within the Apple News feed, dependent on engagement with their
content.
Apple News publishers will continue to receive 100% of the
revenue from the advertising that they sell against their
content in the app.

Apple News+ is a really good product. Scanning its main Today tab in the morning has become my modern-day equivalent of scanning the front page of a printed newspaper — a way to get a sense of what’s going on in world news. There’s a level of editorial curation and presentation in Apple News that I don’t think has a peer. Apple News itself doesn’t publish or report anything, but there’s clearly a talented, level-headed editorial team that is picking and choosing the most important and most interesting (which are often very different things) stories from a wide variety of sources. So maybe a better analogy to the bygone era of print isn’t scanning the front page of a newspaper, but rather stopping at a good big-city newsstand where you could scan the front pages of a slew of newspapers from around the country (and world).

I don’t look to Apple News for anything related to tech. I definitely want to do that via RSS (which for me means NetNewsWire), the web (Safari), and social media. But for national, world, and general interest news, Apple News is really good. I don’t know what it’s like without a News+ subscription, but with one, it’s truly excellent. And a News+ subscription gets you access to a bunch of great publications with paywalls on the web.

If you cemented your opinion of Apple News years ago and tuned out, you should give it a fresh look — especially if you have a “free” News+ subscription via Apple One.

But, my god, the ads suck — low-rent and highly repetitive. I posted screen recordings over the summer illustrating this. It seems like recently, though, I’ve seen fewer ads, and they’ve gotten less repetitive. I just spent a few minutes now perusing the Today tab while writing this post, and I read a bunch of articles without seeing any ads at all. For me at least, the Apple News ad experience seems to be getting better already. But there’s still so much room for improvement.

Whenever I write about this, some readers will comment that, to their minds, a paid subscription like Apple News+ should bestow a completely ad-free experience. That’s how streaming video and music subscriptions tend to work, but even there — as I just posted regarding Disney+ — many people are choosing lower-priced streaming subscriptions subsidized by ads. The economics for ad-free news just don’t work, and never have. News+ isn’t like TV+, where Apple owns or has paid for the rights to all of the content.

Read More 

Dade Hayes, reporting for Deadline:

Fielding a question from a Wall Street analyst about the growth
outlook and pricing strategy of Disney+, Iger divulged how many
Disney+ subscribers take the ad-supported tier in the U.S. (37%)
and globally (30%). The disclosure was unusual in the streaming
sector. Netflix, for instance, has never broken out a similar
percentage, preferring instead to report monthly active users of
its ad tier (as it did earlier this week).

When the Q&A with analysts moved to the next question and CFO Hugh
Johnston was giving his answer, Iger’s voice suddenly could be
heard on the call. “I don’t know if I was supposed to disclose
those AVOD numbers,” he said, before Johnston continued speaking.

Looking at Disney+’s pricing page (and ignoring the wide assortment of bundle offers), their ad-supported “Basic” tier costs $10/month; their ad-free “Premium” tier costs $16/month or $160/year.

 ★ 

Dade Hayes, reporting for Deadline:

Fielding a question from a Wall Street analyst about the growth
outlook and pricing strategy of Disney+, Iger divulged how many
Disney+ subscribers take the ad-supported tier in the U.S. (37%)
and globally (30%). The disclosure was unusual in the streaming
sector. Netflix, for instance, has never broken out a similar
percentage, preferring instead to report monthly active users of
its ad tier (as it did earlier this week).

When the Q&A with analysts moved to the next question and CFO Hugh
Johnston was giving his answer, Iger’s voice suddenly could be
heard on the call. “I don’t know if I was supposed to disclose
those AVOD numbers,” he said, before Johnston continued speaking.

Looking at Disney+’s pricing page (and ignoring the wide assortment of bundle offers), their ad-supported “Basic” tier costs $10/month; their ad-free “Premium” tier costs $16/month or $160/year.

Read More 

Delightfully clever sketch from Tiny Idea.

 ★ 

Delightfully clever sketch from Tiny Idea.

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James Baggott, writing for Car Dealer Magazine:

Jaguar unveiled a new look, logo and direction for its cars at
what was quite possibly the most bizarre automotive media launch
I’ve ever attended — here’s what happened.

Embargoed until today, the event felt like a hallucinogenic sci-fi
movie where the presenters were only allowed to speak in marketing
babble. Unveiling a new concept car — the details of which are
still under embargo until December 3 — Jaguar’s passionate team
spoke for most of the day about how they plan to ‘delete ordinary’
and ‘live vivid’. Whatever that means…

In what, at times, felt like a drunken dream, Jaguar personnel
walked journalists through its plans to ‘reimagine’ the much-loved
brand over the next few years. Calling it a ‘complete reset’,
McGovern at one point told journalists that his team had ‘not been
sniffing the white stuff — this is real’.

Translation: they’ve all been sniffing a metric ton of the white stuff. This looks like the identity for a women’s razor brand or something. Certainly not the identity for a longstanding British sports car company.

Lulu Cheng Meservey:

Jaguar already nailed their marketing decades ago, and given the
demand for nostalgia, now would’ve been the perfect time to
revive it.

Instead, the sad irony is that their “Copy nothing” campaign
abandons their own originality in favor of a fad that peaked
during the pandemic.

 ★ 

James Baggott, writing for Car Dealer Magazine:

Jaguar unveiled a new look, logo and direction for its cars at
what was quite possibly the most bizarre automotive media launch
I’ve ever attended — here’s what happened.

Embargoed until today, the event felt like a hallucinogenic sci-fi
movie where the presenters were only allowed to speak in marketing
babble. Unveiling a new concept car — the details of which are
still under embargo until December 3 — Jaguar’s passionate team
spoke for most of the day about how they plan to ‘delete ordinary’
and ‘live vivid’. Whatever that means…

In what, at times, felt like a drunken dream, Jaguar personnel
walked journalists through its plans to ‘reimagine’ the much-loved
brand over the next few years. Calling it a ‘complete reset’,
McGovern at one point told journalists that his team had ‘not been
sniffing the white stuff — this is real’.

Translation: they’ve all been sniffing a metric ton of the white stuff. This looks like the identity for a women’s razor brand or something. Certainly not the identity for a longstanding British sports car company.

Lulu Cheng Meservey:

Jaguar already nailed their marketing decades ago, and given the
demand for nostalgia, now would’ve been the perfect time to
revive it.

Instead, the sad irony is that their “Copy nothing” campaign
abandons their own originality in favor of a fad that peaked
during the pandemic.

Read More 

I met Dr. Oz ten years ago.

The Hollywood Reporter, which of course is where one now goes to find news of incoming Executive Branch appointments and nominations, “Trump Nominates Dr. Mehmet Oz to Run Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services”:

“America is facing a Healthcare Crisis, and there may be no
Physician more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to Make America
Healthy Again,” Trump said in a statement. “He is an eminent
Physician, Heart Surgeon, Inventor, and World-Class Communicator,
who has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades. Dr.
Oz will work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to take on the
illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases
left in its wake.”

He added, “He won nine Daytime Emmy Awards hosting The Dr. Oz
Show, where he taught millions of Americans how to make healthier
lifestyle choices, and gave a strong voice to the key pillars of
the MAHA Movement.”

I met Dr. Oz ten years ago. It was after the Apple event on Tuesday, 9 September 2014, at the Flint Center in Cupertino, where Apple unveiled Apple Watch after introducing the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Apple had erected a startlingly large temporary building in front of the Flint Center, which, post-event, was opened to attending media and celebrities to showcase Apple Watch’s various capabilities. But post-event press briefings were held inside the Flint Center, in a byzantine complex of subterranean rooms beneath the massive ground floor auditorium.

I had a one-on-one off-the-record briefing with Jony Ive. (Fascinating and fun — we spent most of the all-too-brief 30 minutes talking about watch bands and the exquisite packaging and charging case of the Edition models.) The waiting area for these press briefings was set up to look a bit like a mostly empty Apple Store. The central focus of this waiting area was a large table with a glass top; under the glass were a variety of Apple Watch models. The table was a prototype of the ones that Apple would put in its retail stores, for which they obtained multiple patents. While I was waiting for my briefing with Ive, the only other person from the media waiting with me was Oz.

It’s a weird thing to be alone, effectively, with someone of Oz’s celebrity. It’s like being in a room with a million dollars in $100 bills stacked in a perfectly-arranged pyramid. No matter how hard you try to direct your attention, your mind keeps popping back to Holy shit, there’s a million dollars in cash right there. His hair was perfect, his shirt crisply pressed. It was a very nice shirt. He smiled at all times, and seemed genuinely happy to be there, and genuinely interested in Apple Watch, but not for what Apple Watch actually was or could be, but simply because it was a major new thing, and he was a VIP invitee at the introduction of this major new thing. And my mind would pop, for the umpteenth time, Holy shit, that’s Dr. Oz right there.

We spent an unceasingly awkward 10 minutes circling around that table together. He never shut up. He chattered, nonstop, with inane observations, like “Hey, look at that one, it’s orange! What’s that one, leather?” He was not talking to me, nor was he, really, talking to himself. It was like he was talking to a TV camera, as though we were being filmed for B-roll footage for his show — but there was no camera. It was just me and him, standing around that table exhibiting dozens of Apple Watch prototypes that we were unable to touch, with a handful of Apple PR reps hanging around the sides of the room in silence, pecking away on their iPhones, waiting for a notice from one of their colleagues that it was time to escort one of us to our briefing. Oz was called first, thankfully. It gave me a few minutes of silence to gather my thoughts, and study the watches (albeit under glass), without distraction. I sometimes wonder who his briefing was with. (Phil Schiller, perhaps?)

I came away with the impression that Mehmet Oz was, despite his well-deserved medical renown, preternaturally vapid and preening, and, thus, to me, an incongruous figure. Simultaneously a brilliant mind in the field of thoracic surgery, and yet dumb as a rock in everyday human interaction. I spent the first few minutes with him wondering if I should introduce myself. I spent the last few glad I hadn’t, because he was so obviously a staggeringly uninteresting and uninterested man.

I would have much preferred spending those 10 minutes chatting with Dr. Nick.

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