How Substack is changing my reading habits
The rise of independent journalism
Getting sent out to pick up the early edition of the Sunday New York Times was a heavy responsibility for a kid in the 1960s. Literally. The paper could weigh as much as seven pounds. Even worse, you could be held responsible for such sins as spending 25 cents to buy a paper that unaccountably didn’t include a copy of the Book Review, or some other indispensable section.
The paper would arrive at the candy store in my suburban town at about 9:30 on Saturday evening. The wise kid would check to make sure all the sections – especially the Sunday magazine, the Week in Review, Real Estate, Business and Sports – were in the hefty package. If the paper was missing one of the classified advertising sections, probably no one at home would notice.
This was the kind of formative experience that helped shape my reading habits. Reading the Times was a given. True, my father brought home the Post and the World-Telegram when he commuted back from the city. But the Post’s identity as a liberal paper was on life support. It had the genius of Murray Kempton and the crusading fire of the young Pete Hamill, plus a great sports section, but its owner Dolly Schiff would sell it to Rupert Murdoch, and the World-Telegram would wind up in the graveyard of New York newspapers, taking the Journal down with it.
My relationship as a reader with the Times would endure. I picked up other habits along the way — The Nation and Harper’s during the Vietnam War era, the Washington Post during Watergate. I acquired a taste for the International Herald-Tribune, the leaders of The Economist and the letters section of the Times of London in the middle common room at New College, Oxford, preferring to hang out and read aloud some choice passages while putting off the start of a day of studying.
In the 1990s, I began reading the Wall Street Journal, for its distinguished pre-Murdoch era long-form pieces and its strange editorial page, promoting conspiracy theories about the death of Bill Clinton friend Vincent Foster. (Today the Journal’s editorials often home in intelligently on just what’s wrong with the Trump tariffs and other administration follies.)
More recently, I fell under the spell of the “Lunch With” feature in the Financial Times (including the expense account details), along with sagacious commentary from writers including Edward Luce.
But in the year since I became an “independent journalist,” out from under a big news organization, and started my own home for commentary, Now It’s History, I’ve become a fan of many of my fellow newsletter writers. The morning reading list now goes beyond a scan of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Newsday, FT, CNN and Guardian to include some deep dives into the thoughts and research of other independent journalists.
Huge new playing field
“Everyone needs an editor” is an axiom in journalism. There are major downsides to the shrinking of news organizations, since it erodes the ability to enforce standards, curate information and provide legal and financial protection for journalists.
But there is also an upside: a vastly expanded playing field for the sharing of news and information. Freed from the constraints of big media, writers can follow their passions; readers can follow their curiosity.
No longer do you have to hope the editors at the New York Times will green-light a column idea Paul Krugman proposes; the Nobel Prize-winning economist now is his own boss on Substack and can write whatever he wants, whenever he wants and at whatever length he thinks fit. If he wants to nerd out about tariffs for 2,000 words, it’s there for you to explore to the limits of your time and interest.
Paul Krugman is just one of the voices a curious reader can follow in this new world. I’m finding many other writers worth searching out.
Is there a writer on the Supreme Court as knowledgeable and judicious as Steve Vladeck, who teaches law at Georgetown?
Gabe Fleisher shines a searchlight on the machinations of Congress. His piece on the Senate parliamentarian was a gold mine of vital information. He’s performing an invaluable service with a reader’s guide to exactly what is in the One Big Beautiful Bill.
Over at his Status newsletter on the Beehiiv platform, Oliver Darcy explores the state of the modern media as well as any press critic writing today.
Alexis Coe’s unconventional approach to American history is refreshing. Julian Zelizer’s deep well of knowledge on presidential history is invaluable.
Noah Smith is a first-rate thinker on economics. I want to know what Ruth Ben-Ghiat is writing about authoritarianism, how Chris Cillizza is calling balls and strikes on politics, what Frida Ghitis and David Andelman are saying about international relations, what Dean Obeidallah senses about the past, present and future of MAGA, how Andrew Sullivan is summing up the zeitgeist of the week.
I keep up with former Newsday colleagues by reading Fred Bruning for his layered weekly explorations of memory and social change, Reg Gale for a health journalist’s take on RFK Jr., Rex Smith for the perspective from upstate New York, Bob Keeler for a pacifist’s view of the world.
The best thing about being a journalist in America is the license it gives you to ask questions. In a nation with a free press, reporters can query anyone about anything. You may get the door slammed in your face. But the First Amendment implicitly gives you the right to follow your curiosity as you see fit, to ask questions of the most and least powerful people.
That right can now be experienced much more widely, with social media vastly expanding the pool of people able to ask questions and learn from the answers. Platforms like Substack make following your curiosity much easier.
The man who tried to rein in presidential war powers
“A conciliator, not a firebrand.” That was how the New York Times’ Steven V. Roberts described Rep. Clement J. Zablocki in his obituary December 4, 1983. The Democrat from Milwaukee “preferred consensus to confrontation” and was known for “a bushy mustache he kept carefully clipped, and a tiny, leather-bound pipe he kept clasped in his hand.”
Indeed on all counts.
Some of the very best on substack are refugees (like you) from the legacy media, others are top-tier academics who want to broaden the lens and their audience, still others are practicing or former professionals in a variety of fields (in my case, for what it’s worth, diplomacy). Like you, I find myself spending more and more time reading some truly superb writing on this app, and less and less on the NY Times itself, the Atlantic, the New Yorker and even The Economist (still a touchstone in my book). So little time!
At the same time, as far as my own humble productions go, I’m grateful I have a close friend who is willing to give my quick and dirty drafts a quick sanity test and, as necessary, some line editing. But besides that, I’m on my own, unbound by an institutional editor’s constraints but probably somewhat unfocused and undisciplined at times too.
I suppose you take the good with the bad. And as Tina Brown (media and society page savvy as she is makes her among the most penetrating critics of our reality TV political era) says in these electronic pages, substack complements the offerings of traditional media organizations but cannot replace them. You need the infrastructure and deeper pockets for the research and investigation required, also the fact checkers and the lawyers just in case.
Interesting times.
Living in Thailand, things are not as easy here. One cannot just write what one thinks. The space for analysis and opinion is very narrow, both for Thais and for foreigners.