Journalism is Changing... Fast

March 9, 2025

Hi Everyone! Sorry for my unexpected 2 week hiatus. I got Lasik surgery 2 weeks back which necessitated a reduction in screen time for a bit. I used what time I did have to keep up with Moldova Matters through the tumultuous events of the last weeks. Then, I got the flu which is notoriously bad for productivity. Anyhow, I’m back. For any really astute readers you’ll notice that I changed the name of this newsletter to Fools & Foreigners. Changes come along to all new projects and I’ll be explaining this one a bit more in an upcoming post - one ironically focused on idea of impermanence. But that’s for later, today here are some thoughts about how journalism is changing and what role I see Substack playing in that.

I started writing Moldova Matters 4 years ago last month. Back then a lot of the appeal of starting a newsletter focused on Moldovan politics and economics was personal - I wanted to work on my writing skills and I needed something to do during COVID lockdowns. Writing a weekly roundup of what was going on in the country I called home for an English speaking audience seemed like a way to do both. But another big factor was my discovery of Substack.

Back in 2014 when my partners and I started the process of opening a restaurant I wrote a blog ambitiously titled “Open Source Entrepreneurship” which chronicled the process of opening a business in Moldova. It should have been called “Opening a Restaurant in Moldova” but I had some big dream about attracting contributors and creating a kind of hub of business stories. Back then I looked at the options for running a blog and decided to build my own website for the task using Joomla. Times have really changed. Since then I dabbled a bit on Medium but found it really lacking. It seemed to me little better than creating a google doc and sharing that with my facebook friends. There was some vague monetization theory but I never had any illusions that something I would write would attract enough readers for advertising.

Substack really changed my calculus. The idea of using something as old as email and pairing it with a simple web platform and plug-and-play monetization grabbed my attention. It was one thing to do some writing on the side… but could it be a business? As an entrepreneur and someone who pretty regularly consulted friends on business planning and strategy this made the thought of a newsletter fun for a whole new reason. What I didn’t realize at the time was that people like me who were just starting out with a new idea would only be one piece of the new Substack world - the bigger piece would be the migration of household names to the platform from the New York Times, Washington Post and other prestigious outlets.

Substack is Having a Moment

This week ABC news shuttered 538 and laid off the remaining staff. What used to be the premier data journalism division in news was first allowed to decline and then simply axed with little fanfare. 538’s election forecasting models and data based sports analysis was revolutionary when Nate Silver started FiveThirtyEight and the industry wide impacts of that revolution are going to live on. What struck me about the closure was the fact that Galen Druke, host of the 538 Politics Podcast, was right back online with a new podcast in around a day - on Substack.

Back in 2023 when ABC first downsized the 538 newsroom and parted ways with founder Nate Silver he also moved to Substack. His “Silver Bulletin” then quickly raced up the Substack leaderboards becoming a massive bestselling publication.

Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman left the New York Times in December 2024 after writing a column with the paper for 24 years. He’s on Substack now.

Outside of individual journalists and commentators whole newsrooms have grown up on Substack with examples like The Bulwark showing that entire media institutions can be built on a platform like this.

If this sounds like a glowing endorsement of Substack that isn’t my goal. Other newsletter platforms like Ghost are also players in this revolution and provide the backbone to amazing new sites like 404 Media. It’s not the company or platform that matters but the fact that something pretty profound is changing in journalism itself.

As I see it there are basically 2 factors driving the growth of projects like the ones I named above:

1. The dying business model of traditional media - Physical newspapers, classified ads and the cable bundle are all going the war of the dodo - fast.

2. Journalism is rediscovering “voice” - Paul Krugman, Nate Silver and lots of other big names who made the switch have written about how free they feel after throwing off editorial constraints. For Krugman this means that he can insert more charts than the NYTimes approved of and unleash his sense of humor. For others it means exploring topics that wouldn’t be permitted and blending news, analysis and informed opinion in ways that traditional institutions would not permit.

These factors basically explain (at least to me) why people would want to try something new. What explains the real growth in this space is the fact that it works. Big names can make a whole lot more money writing a newsletter or starting a podcast than they could being on the payroll at their old companies. Smaller players like me can build a nice little side business where none was previously possible. That’s allowed something new to start moving into all that dead space left by the death of the small town newspaper and niche magazines. The future, it turns out, isn’t just a TikTok / Facebook hellscape after all.

A New (Old) Kind of Media

One thing that has really struck me about this shift is that question of “voice” I mentioned above. I’m an avid reader of the NYTimes and probably consume more traditional media than 100 average people combined¹. But in today’s reality it all feels really discordant at times. Coverage of how Trump said “whatever” followed by coverage of how Trump denied saying “whatever” rarely gets to the real point. Was what he was saying true? Was it important? There’s a gap left by pure fact based reporting that was never truly filled by the opinion pages and in our current global moment it feels really apparent. People like me want to know what is going on but also what it all means. Apparently there’s quite an audience for that.

In a way this is an old thing - advocacy journalism. Newsrooms set up to promote a specific cause were pretty frequent in the early 1900s before consolidation built our more modern media landscape. The idea of starting with values and perspectives other than impartiality was more the norm than the exception at one point.

I don’t think we’re seeing a new golden age for issue specific publications necessarily, but we are seeing a change in how many journalists see their own roles. In an independent newsletter or a podcast a journalist or commentator will often openly share their perspective while sharing the news. This blending of analysis, opinion and hard news allows readers or listeners to engage with a person in a much more open way. From my perspective the addition of voice has the potential to be additive to the experience of trying to understand the world rather than destructive.

Now let’s be clear - I’m not talking about pure opinion. At Moldova Matters I write every week with the goal of providing my readers with the most important information about Moldova and the context that they need to understand it. I source every fact with links to local journalists or other online sources and spend a *lot* of time making sure that I don’t write anything that cannot be banked on.

At the same time, I have a pretty clear perspective. I support Moldova joining the European community of nations. I oppose Russia’s attempt to conquer Ukraine and impose its colonial will on Moldova. That does not mean that I support specific political parties or try and skew the news in their favor. It also does not mean that I will print Kremlin talking points read out by one of Moscow’s puppets as an example of genuine local sentiments (Trump said “whatever” today). In short, it means that I use judgement and apply my worldview to what I write. Personally I think that this is true to a greater or lesser extent everywhere - and I like being open about it.

I also have a number of readers who fundamentally disagree with me one some of these topics, so apparently my worldview does not remove the value provided by the fact based journalism. Readers get to know me and I’ve built trust with them. I think that matters a lot.

However you construe the question of “voice” it’s worth noting that it is a new (old) thing and represents quite a change in how print journalism is getting done now. I think that we’re only seeing the start of this trend.

Dispersal and Second Order Effects

Up until the last few months none of these trends were driven by Donald Trump. If anything, the first Trump administration breathed new life into traditional news outlets as they covered whatever crazy twists and turns he presented. That’s now changed. There is every indication that his verbal attacks on the media and frivolous lawsuits are starting to have real impacts - even at major institutions like the Washington Post.

In January a group of reporters from the Post decamped to… you guessed it, Substack. They started The Contrarian and wrote about why they left in a piece than condemned Bezos’ influence and spoke of the need for a vibrant and new way of covering the news.

This new trend highlights the fact that there is an alternative that is both practical and financially viable - and it’s ready to go. I think this fact will be really important in the months to come.

Back in February 2022 Ukrainian army units quietly left their bases and took up field positions immediately prior to the Russian invasion. Aircraft were moved to remote airstrips and critical air defense systems were re-positioned before they could be destroyed in their previously known locations. This “dispersal” was possible because the United States and European allies had warned of the impending invasion and the Ukrainian army professionally prepared themselves for a worst case scenario. Russia’s failure to bomb units and heavy equipment before they dispersed was critical to Ukraine’s survival.

This new media landscape that is emerging has the side effect of creating similar conditions for the American media. The Trump administration can target major media companies via their corporate owners or threaten to sue independent outlets like the NYTimes. But this becomes substantially harder if there are hundreds or thousands of commercially viable media companies instead of dozens. None of this is planned and it doesn’t reflect a broad consensus that things will get that bad. But it does make for harder targeting.

So as this new world of newsletters and podcasts continues to grow I take some comfort in that. People and organizations change to adapt to how the world changes. Writers want more freedom to use their voice and readers like that. Old business models are dying but new ones are being born to replace them. In a time of serious threat against the free press in America the media is dispersing into smaller, nimbler and substantially more vibrant entities that will be hard to muzzle.

Next week I’m going to reflect on impermanence and change more broadly. But for now I’ll leave you with this thought - change isn’t always a bad thing.

1. That’s not a brag, more like an admission of a problem.