Ana Marie Cox on the Shaky Foundation of Substack as a Business

Ana Marie Cox, who knows a thing or two about indie publishing and journalism, on her AMC All the Time blog about a month ago:

My take is more dire, because I’m not sure about “savvy and stamina” as the distinguishing characteristics of those who might be able to migrate elsewhere. I think plenty of smart folks might find themselves stuck.

Substack is rickety. It’s as unstable as a SpaceX launch, as overpromised as a Stephen Miller marriage.

Substack does not have a clear future as a newsletter business, I’m not the first to notice that. But it doesn’t have to fail outright to be a disaster. It just has to keep trying to become a life-sized map of the internet: maximum content, maximum churn. The center cannot hold — especially not for newsletters, a format that depends on intimacy and long-standing trust.

The Substack bust will not just take out a few hot-take merchants and media dilettantes. It’s going to take down a lot of working journalists who’ve built modest, sustainable incomes as well as the fragile public sphere we’ve been piecing together in the ashes of Twitter and the twilight of traditional journalism.

Taylor Lorenz’s scoop today on Substack’s Nazi notification oopsie reminded me that I’ve been meaning to link to this post from Cox casting a serious stink eye at Substack’s business. As she says up front, “Let’s set Substack’s ‘Nazi problem’ aside for a moment. What if the bigger issue is being stranded on a collapsing platform ... with a bunch of Nazis?”

Substack pitches itself to would-be independent writers as a thriving platform that’s fundamentally about independent blog publishing and email newsletter distribution. That could be a great business. But it would be a relatively small business compared to Substack’s fund raising (over $100 million so far, and currently looking to raise more) and the implied valuation that fund raising implies (at one point, they were pitching investors that they were worth $1 billion, which is about as realistic as El Gringo Loco Anaranjado’s promises that Mexico will pay for a US border wall).

Ghost is a platform and business that’s actually built for independent writers. So is Buttondown (which Cox uses for her site). Beehiiv too. There’s a whole cottage industry of creator-oriented blog-cum-newsletter platforms. Substack, on the other hand, is a trap. It breaks my heart to see great writers as disparate as Paul Krugman and Michael Chabon set up their ostensibly independent presences on Substack. Writers check in, but — if Substack gets their way — they won’t check out.

Looking at the numbers Cox lays out, Substack’s future looks even worse than I thought. Before they go under, though, their investors will put the screws to them, and Substack will take its heel turn.

★ Saturday, 2 August 2025