It is an idyllic, almost utopian, perspective. There is an imagined logic at play, entirely divorced from reality. In the world where Substack were an expeditious route to “more people” being able to “make a good and profitable career out of writing”, we would also live in a world where you bought your lamp chops from a butcher, your baguette from a bakery, your stilton from a cheesemonger and your wine from a vintner, rather than just everything from a supermarket. The fact that there was a period, in the 90s and 00s, when consumers seemed to repudiate newspapers — the supermarkets of journalism — did not mean that the idea was wrong, but that the sale mechanic was at fault. Just as supermarkets have iterated, in the same period, to introduce self-service and home delivery, so too should the more endangered business of journalism. To think that long term stability is in returning to individual shopkeepers, and raising prices for consumers, is regression masking as progress.
