What Substack wants in Trump’s Washington
Hamish McKenzie materialized from a balcony looking over the lobby of the Line hotel in Washington, D.C., on Saturday night.
The Substack co-founder and “chief writing officer” had flown in from San Francisco to assemble his particular varietal of news peddlers and news junkies at a soiree concurrent with the White House correspondents’ dinner — counterprogramming for those who’d rather hobnob with fellow newsletterers than cable television anchors and newspaper executives. Instead, the crowd was full of formers — former print reporters, former TV newsmen, even Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, who has a popular Substack of his own.
Related Knowledge Center: State of the business model
The traditional journalism business model has long since collapsed, and news organizations have shrunk or disappeared entirely. While a number of promising experiments are under way, the public has not shown a willingness to buy what news organizations are selling.