My last years at the paper weren't my most pleasant. My job went from being one I would say, earnestly, I would do for free, to one I struggled to justify doing for pay. The zombie thing that came to be published under my name had a dwindling trace of my breath in it. It was no longer fully my voice.
Substack's bet that writers want the platform to provide a community just as much as distribution appears to be paying off in 2025. Five newsletter creators who moved their operations over to Substack from other platforms such as Patreon and Beehiiv in the past year told Digiday that their following - and revenue - had grown since they made the jump, directly crediting Substack community tools such as co-livestreaming and recommendations for the subscriber boost.
"I quickly pulled up , published on February 9th, and then hers, published March 13th. The title was different, though it conveyed the same idea; however, the body was a near copy-paste job, with a few bits removed or changed and some words swapped out, I guess to make it seem 'different' enough. But it wasn't. My observations, metaphors, italicised emphasis (!), and the research I'd gathered stared back at me from her page."
