Sorry, not with her.

A lot of you won’t like this and I’ll probably lose followers.

Whatever, just like other past Saviours of The Grand Craft of Journalism, Substack’s a venture capitalist scam. At the start, they bribed some of the worst people with big platforms to shill for the venture. Big names were paid mountains of money to join, then got mountains of paid followers. Because the terrible people I’m talking about are arrogant, narcissistic and greedy, they will for eternity pretend that Substack is a bastion of Journalistic Freedom and Free Speech that’s the Sole Appreciator of Their Talents and all the P.C. Marms in mainstream media can’t handle Substack because of all of the FREEDOM OF SPEECH! Actually, I can’t handle the quality of Matt Taibbi’s copy when he doesn’t have an editor. Anyway, lots of non-famous independent journalists joined Substack, drawn by legends of Substack gold.

At some point, Substack clearly changed the algorithm in some way and now it virtually never generates new paid subscribers, like it used to. I’m sure it’s a combination of factors. Over-saturation. Last year, everyone in journalism got fired and started a Substack. There’s content quality. I do admit that when I co-started this with Zach Siegel, (whose Substack you should follow!) the blog centered on criminal justice (me) and drugs and addiction (Zach) and now I just write about whatever makes me mad. Still, I can see poor content and Substack over-saturation lowering the rate of new paid subs, but not totally killing them. My conspiracy theory: they get new writers, help them get enough paid followers so writers make enough money to not be able to afford to stop doing it, and then because free subs engage with Substack way more than paid, bury promotions for paid subs.

Anyway here’s what you won’t like, but you have be a paid subscriber to find out!