First Time Founders: Has Substack Changed Media For Good?

Hogging seats on a crowded train, not saying excuse me, watching videos on your phone with no headphones in. Sometimes it feels like we don't know how to act anymore. What we have been seeing, increasingly, is people breaking rules. Why should I play by the rules if nobody else is going to do that for me? This week on Explain It to Me, how to mind your manners.

New episodes Sundays wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to First Time Founders. I'm Ed Elson. America's confidence in mass media is collapsing. Only about a third say they have any meaningful trust that major outlets report the news fully and fairly, and more than a third say they just don't trust the media at all.

Meanwhile, the people who produce that content are facing their own crisis across the industry, writers and journalists are being laid off in waves as legacy outlets struggle to adapt and survive. Together, these shifts have pushed both audiences and creators toward a new home. Millions of readers are seeking voices they can trust directly without an institutional filtering. And at the same time, thousands of writers have begun building independent businesses there.

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