I harbor the fantasy that one day my phone will be constructive to my well-being. As our digital and physical spheres become more inseparable and more imaginative, forgoing technology altogether seems disadvantageous. So with a hopeful heart, I’ve made various attempts at using technology to encourage my interests rather than distract from them; over the years this has meant an imperfect cycle of deleting and redownloading. My most recent renovation has been shifting my attention from Twitter to Substack, the online publishing platform that houses journalism, criticism, op-eds, blog-esque posts and everything in between.
The founding of Substack in 2017 and its growing popularity seem part and parcel of journalism’s present struggle to sustain audience interest. As media companies try to keep up with an increasingly cheap and efficient content distribution market, they trip over themselves in a cycle of mergers and acquisitions that further alienates audiences. This aggregation continuously misunderstands the specific, personable and local appeal of content. It’s saddening to have seen newspapers’ circulation plunge over my lifetime, especially in small to mid-sized cities, as media conglomerates fail to fill the gaps these outlets leave behind. This shrinkage can hardly be attributed to a decline in good writers, however — writers who are reaching audiences on platforms like Substack.
On Substack, writers have the leeway to take on a public-facing role where their work goes directly to their subscriber’s Substack inbox. It’s a centralized site where readers can opt-in to receive what they deem worthy of their attention and where writers can engage with their audience through chat and notes features. Writers who publish to Substack have full editorial control over their work, which gives readers the sense that they’re engaging with a person, not a corporation. It also helps readers, myself included, feel they are reading something singular, something that is authentically DIY.
Numerous Middlebury professors, students and alumni publish on Substack, including author and Assistant Professor of English, Megan Mayhew-Bergman who explores the relationship between person and place on her page, Open Field Stories.
“Many outlets which used to support deep long-form journalism have turned into homes for product placement puff pieces,” wrote Mayhew-Bergman in a message to The Campus. “Being able to write with nuance and complexity and not create short clickbait pieces matters to me, and options for doing so are disappearing.”
Mayhew-Bergman writes a regular newsletter via Substack, which she sees as a mutual exchange with readers on how the natural world, the climate crisis and sensory writing affect our personhood.
“At Substack, the burden is on you to create well and to publish work you’re okay standing behind,” Mayhew-Berman wrote. “I tend to publish twice a month. I have a healthy following, not a massive one - but I feel like I’m in a real conversation with my readers. I care about them. I’m moved when they support my work. I feel like we’re joining forces to open up conversations about a degraded planet.”
Associate Professor of Political Science Gary Winslett has been posting on Substack since 2021.
“Substack is very easy in that you don’t need anybody’s permission,” said Winslett in an interview with The Campus. “One of the great things about both Twitter and Substack is that if you think you’ve got something to say you can go get an audience. And if people like what you’re doing they’ll share your work and increase your scale over time and every now and again you’ll have something go big.”
Winslett, who began his Substack “The Neoliberal Papers” in response to a perceived need for re-engaged center-left politics, has enjoyed success in pieces on the Vermont housing crisis and the divisive reputation of libertarianism. These articles’ pertinence has managed to find circulation despite not being backed by a legacy news outlet or academic publication.
“If you feel like you have something to say in the public realm, you need to go somewhere outside of just academic journals,” Winslett said. “The downside is that there is limited institutional reach — you’re not going to get anybody’s help in furthering the message and so there’s a use for Substack but also a set of limitations.”
For alumna and former Campus columnist Sarah Miller ’24, Substack has been a forum to hone her craft and gain footing in the world of professional writing. She has found Substack to be a means of continuing her interest in the intersection of criticism and personal essay. Her page, “Promising Young Woman” is an astute examination of being 22 in the year 2024.
“There are very few publications that feel like they’re both about ideas and also care about the individual prose of an argument, and I think that both of those things are really important to me, and that’s why I’m working on Substack,” said Miller in an interview with The Campus.
Substack’s rise to prominence is also tied to a nostalgia for blogging. 2000s-era blogs offered a venue for writers to cultivate and publish their specific stylings, and Substack hopes to capitalize on the same personable appeal. These blogs with their color schemes, deliberate font choices and vibrant layouts mimic the feeling of the audience looking into a blogger’s room, whereas, Substack’s functional layout readers are given access to solely the author’s notebook. Yet both are often faulted for being overly confessional and unserious: a glorified dispatch from the notes app.
“What’s cool about Substack is that I feel very free to talk about my personal life and my feelings,” Miller said. “It’s not a diary for me because I have a diary, and that’s different, but it’s a way for my friends of mine who I don’t see every day anymore to know what’s going on in my life and what I’m thinking about. It’s a cool way to keep in touch with people.”
Substack is not merely a newsletter for Miller’s friends but a portfolio that is linked on her CV.
“I think Substack is a much more live and dynamic platform than a blog because there’s a community of people on Substack reading Substack and people in the industry looking toward Substack,” Miller said.
Winslett agreed, “I think they’ve done something really clever and figured out how to give everybody who wanted a blog a place to do that where they would actually have some reach and not just a random site no one traffics.”
Substack, from a business standpoint, would love to have more subscribers traffic their site. Yet Substack’s ethos as a community-oriented platform calls the organization’s slogan, “Building a new economic engine for culture,” into question. As a young company, Substack’s legacy remains to be seen. Whether the brand can reconcile a profit-oriented sensibility with an indie-journalistic feel is a question that is relevant to our current media landscape and is keeping Substack on my home screen.
“Substack is fast and allows a writer to be responsive and on the pulse a little more,” Mayhew-Bergman wrote. “At its worst, a lack of gatekeeping and fast publishing - both part of Substack’s promise - contributes to America’s opinion and misinformation culture. At its best, it allows a writer to be honest, present, and agile in a culture with a rapid-fire news cycle. The burden is on the writer to be solid with good intentions, and the reader to be discerning.”
It’s not a coincidence that the most evocative, inspired essays and articles I’ve read in recent years, I’ve found on Substack. Contributors to the platform are in an intermediate space somewhere between auteur and content creator — I hope that moving forward, we’ll consider them neither. The most successful Substackers in my mind are writers with a specific angle who are free to lean into the role of author or influencer as they see fit. They often are a lyricist-analyst hybrid. To amass an audience amid the current content onslaught, these writers will need to carve out a niche that speaks to their personal tastes and experiences, and Substack currently offers the flexibility and affability required to chart the uncertain waters of modern media. It’s my sincere hope that the platform continues to embolden a subscription to generative, noteworthy writing rather than sinking into the generalized trap of marketable content.
Catherine Goodrich '24 (she/her) is a Senior Arts and Culture Editor.
Catherine previously served as an Arts and Culture editor and Staff Writer. Catherine is an English and Film double major hailing from Birmingham, Alabama. She is the prose editor for the Blackbird Literary Arts journal and works concessions at the Middlebury Marquis where she has developed a love for trivia and making nachos.
