It was as close to the ideal of the web as I remember. Everyone had their own domain, their own blog, freedom to post whatever and whenever they liked, freedom to invite comments if they wished, and to link their site to others.
Good writing could flourish, knowledge could be shared, competence proved and services showcased. Everyone had their own window to the world. Communities flourished. I know – I was part of one, a network of designers concerned with driving the adoption of web standards and the mobile web.
It was some time ago and I’m close to sentimentality. There were cliques and hierarchies, snark and squabbles. But the ‘blogosphere’ that prospered 10 or 15 years ago – from around the early 2000s to the early 2010s – fulfilled something of the web’s early promise, giving anyone with an internet connection the freedom to publish without having to submit to mainstream publications. The web could, and I think should, return to something like it.
Of course blogging has never gone away. Individual writers, organisations and companies are still sharing good content. But the digital landscape writers face today is rather more obscure – and darker – than it was.
The rise of the writing platforms
The picture was complicated around 2012 when social media began to emerge as the primary channel for online communication, replacing the blog post with fragmentary content, indulging short attention spans and rewarding those best able to command attention through simplification, controversy, or both.
Writing platforms like Medium and Substack present themselves as contemporary outlets for long form content. But they have done so at a cost. Beyond the professed altruism there are commercial imperatives to monopolise online writing in the same way that Amazon captured retail, Instagram photos, YouTube videos, and Facebook personal connections.
The big writing platforms certainly have compelling features. They offer all the functionality necessary to start posting immediately with a custom subdomain, they have pleasing designs conducive to online reading, and, in Substack’s case, offer a newsletter subscription service.
Both promise a ready-made audience, placing the writer in a community of fellow writers and readers waiting to be cultivated. And both have revenue models, opening the prospect of actually earning money from writing, Medium through an option to paywall content, and Substack (rather more effectively) through paid newsletter subscriptions. Some writers have undoubtedly prospered, producing well written, informed content that readers are willing to pay for. No need to pay for an online journal to access your favourite writers: just sign-up to their Substack newsletter for $5 a month.
Looking beyond Substack and Medium
That’s the promise. But for all the talk of a radical new form of publishing none of this is new. Everything the writing platforms promise can be achieved through the classic blogging architecture established nearly 20 years ago.
A blog can be set up easily through free or inexpensive platforms like WordPress, Squarespace or Wix. Indeed old favourites such as Blogger are still going. Writers can choose from a vast range of well designed blogging templates, and can monetise sites through e-commerce plugins, paid-for newsletters and paywalls. It takes a bit more work to get started, but it can all be done by sourcing modular plug-and-play solutions and cheap, secure hosting. If you can’t do it yourself a web developer should be able to get you started for no more than a few hours work.
And rolling your own system has clear advantages over the platforms. You can choose your own design, your domain name (no need to use Medium and Substack subdomains), your content is wide open to search engines, and – crucially – you, not the platforms, are in control.
That’s important because, in the end, Medium and Substack are there to make money, not showcase your work. Their business model follows that of the big web platforms that have preceded them, which have grown according to a familiar pattern. They start with an ideal: to bring retail to the desktop; to open a space for the world to share its photos and videos; to bring friends and relatives together. See Amazon, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. But once their user base reaches a critical mass their investors demand higher returns. Ever more value must be extracted from users.
It’s already happening at both Medium and Substack. Medium now encourages writers to put their best content behind a paywall. Substack takes every opportunity to push its users towards subscription-only posts. And paying subscribers expect content, lots of it. In the words of the academic and occasional online writer Brad East:
Put charitably, it’s as though everyone is now a writer for Harper’s or First Things or the NYRB or NYT Magazine, only they produce copy at an outrageous rate. Put less charitably, the Substack-ification of writing makes an op-ed columnist out of everyone – except twice or thrice as prolific, minus the journalistic chops, and lacking in editorial oversight.
An eloquent polemic posted to Substack by the anonymous ‘W.A. Finnigan’ imagines how the platform’s monetisation process might play itself out.
First, the 10% subscription fee will creep up. Ads may be introduced. Algorithms may be re-engineered to promote the content most likely to drive Substack’s growth, paving the way for premium fees promising to boost placement in search results. As the platform continues to grow established brands with financial power are likely to move in, sidelining independent writers. Neutrality could be compromised by content moderators, or by politicisation under new ownership (see Facebook and Twitter). As the service degrades users will begin to swarm to an emerging competitor (just as many writers have switched from Medium to Substack). There the cycle – from ideal to product – will repeat itself.
As W.A. Finnigan elaborates: ‘Substack is, for now, a writer’s paradise. No algorithms messing with visibility, no corporate overlords dictating editorial slants, and no reliance on advertisers who pull the strings. It’s direct, it’s simple, and it works—for now. But history tells us that nothing stays pure forever.’ Or as the journalist Katy Cowan puts it: ‘Isn’t this just another rental space that ultimately wants to make a lot of money?’
Breaking the cycle
Many writers will be prepared to move from platform to platform, following where the action and money is perceived to be. But the classic blog is a way out of the loop, offering both control and the opportunity to monetise niche content that an audience will be willing to pay for, perhaps through a paid-for newsletter, a paywall, or a self-published book.
The fear of missing out is strong, of course. Writers going their own way will have to invest time to build their audience. But that is also the case when signing up to Substack or Medium. They can be very lonely places. There’s no escape from the hard work of publishing good content and making sure the right people know about it. It isn’t necessary to be on Substack to do that.
I don’t wish to suggest that the platforms have not encouraged good new writing. Many have made their reputations on them, and a few have made money. And some bloggers (including me) find it useful to maintain a presence on Medium or Substack (or both) to drive readers to their own site.
Just remember we don’t need platforms to share what we want to say. The web is the platform.