Ep 387: Can Substack Save Journalism? + Viral Advice for Ignoring Your Phone
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Right around this time last year, one of the big stories in the world of media was the announcement that the economist and columnist Paul Krugman was leaving the New York Times. I'm going to load here on the screen for people who are watching one of the articles from around this period. You can see the headline was Paul Krugman on leaving the New York Times, and the subhead says, The paper wanted to take away his newsletter or make him write less frequently. he says. Uh it goes on to summarize that Krugman was fed up with that.
He felt like he was being pushed out and he left. Now at the time when this all went down last year, I took it as yet another example of this sort of slow motion dismantling of traditional media that we have been seeing during the entire era of the internet's rise. I mean in an age of digital distraction, the business model for traditional media is really struggling to compete, right? Because on your phone, Information is free and distraction is powerful.
And if you want to know about your about the news, your phone can deliver you dozens of algorithmically curated takes that are reduced down to pithy tweets or compelling short-term videos to make you feel like you're in the middle of all sorts of action. It's just more interesting and more accessible. than a lot of traditional media. So it feels like the age in which experts like Paul Krugman attempt to make careful sense of events in the pages of print publications is rapidly disappearing, and that in its place is emerging a world in which all truth and expertise are vanishing, all information is becoming entertainment, all realities are becoming equally valid. But then, more recently, I came across something interesting.
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