Dear author/journalist/media professional,
I might have enjoyed your writing in big magazine/newspaper/new media site, but I am not willing to send you, individual author, $50 a year to hear only your voice on a platform that still seems to be totally OK with hateful content, especially if you only write long form once every now and again with the rest of your compositions essentially tweets. I definitely do not want to read your words in an increasingly walled off AOL-esque compound. Notes! Chat! Comments! DMs! Video! Podcasts! Your customers can enter (for a fee) and never need to leave!
Author, you do what makes the most sense for you. But don’t pretend your solo project that offers you an “unfiltered outlet” – one without the journalistic support of fact checkers, editors, and so on – is, ipso facto, good for readers. Especially if you’re already well-to-do several times over, like a best selling author perhaps, angling for even more money from your readers sucks.
Maybe you, author, should get over yourself.
However, let’s consider the possibility that everything you write is, in fact, precious and needs its own revenue stream. Please bear in mind that not everyone who wants to read your stuff has the money to do so. Not all your readers want to live in the newsletter platform ecosystem. Not everyone wants 10% of what they pay to read your words to go to a service that platforms Nazis and hate groups. Not everyone wants to be nagged to download the platform’s lock-in oriented app to engage further.
What do I suggest? Come together. Defector, 404 Media, Flaming Hydra, and now Hearing Things are a collection of writers with unique voices using more open platforms on the back end. Readers and subscribers can engage with the content on their terms, for the most part. Voltron yourself with some other authors. Take a cut of the subscription/donation rate, share technology and support, and give your readers more value for their increasingly stressed dollar. Even Medium offers a subscription that will let you read different authors under it, which is good as things are rather fallow there at the moment. Then there are sites coming back from the dead like The Onion and The A.V. Club under new, supportive ownership. I’m keeping an eye on them. I am encouraged by what I see so far. Keen readers will note a lot of these sites are from folks who used to live in the Gawker-verse.
Anyway, these collectives offer more for both readers and writers/producers. The one-platform-to-rule-them-all approach, aside of traveling the down the same path that inevitably leads to enshittification, is geared to the writer/producer but ultimately the platform and advertisers.
These collectives also support an open web. RSS feeds! Email newsletters that go to actual email inboxen! Support for the IndieWeb/fediverse! Letting readers engage with the content on their terms outside of a walled garden! They own and control their own stuff in a P.O.S.S.E. fashion!
For the love of all that is readworthy, authors and collectives, please encourage your platforms to offer authentication options (e.g., username/password with 2FA, maybe passkeys) and not the BS that is the email “Magic Link”.
