How Substack Breaks Through the Attention Economy

John interviews Hamish McKenzie, one of the co-founders of Substack. Since its start in 2017, the company has managed to upend the relationship between journalists and news outlets. A good number of prominent writers, including Anne Helen Peterson, Glenn Greenwald, Andrew Sullivan, Matt Yglesias — and John Ellis himself — have started newsletters on Substack, and some of them make a good deal more money than they did when they were employed at traditional outlets.  Of course, the company hasn’t been without some controversy. John and Hamish talk about that, as well as the company’s newly announced effort to attract comic book creators — and how it plans to fend off competition from giants like Facebook. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Om Podcasten

Ninety percent of the news out there tells you nothing about where the world is going — ten percent of it tells you everything. Every afternoon on the News Items Podcast with John Ellis, John and Rebecca Darst focus on that ten percent — news that’s interesting, important or both. The podcast is based on John Ellis’ News Items, an email newsletter that goes out to organizations including the Council on Foreign Relations, Samsung Next, and the Wall Street Journal. Tune in every Monday through Thursday afternoon to hear decades of journalistic experience packed into 20 or so minutes of insight, plus guest interviews on finance, U.S. politics, foreign affairs, science and technology. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.