why i am no longer writing about substack on substack

apart from this post, obviously

¹Back in my 20s, when I was staff columnist on a Canadian broadsheet, one of the unwritten, much-spoken rules was that ‘no one likes a process piece.’ A process piece, in case you’re not au fait with antique journalistic lingo, is a story that includes details about the reporting, editing and/or legal process behind the story itself — the inside-inside scoop.

The serious senior newsmen at the very sombre right-leaning national paper I worked all agreed that process pieces were self-indulgent, boring. Not to us obviously — journalists are obsessed with ourselves, the masthead resembled a Woodward and Bernstein impersonator troupe — but to “real people” (a.k.a. readers) who wanted just the plain, unadorned facts, nothing more.

How wrong they were.

Privately of course we all secretly relished a good process piece. They usually appeared in American magazines like Harper’s or The Atlantic or gossipy New York memoirs. When we found one we’d pass it round the newsroom like a dog-eared centrefold in the playground, whispering, Oh my god, you’ve got to read this. The writers especially love process pieces, and because of this we were always trying to slip our own attempts past the gatekeepers. But the editors, who had their marching orders from management, pushed back. //TOO INSIDE BASEBALL —CUT NEXT 4 GRAFS// was a note I saw a lot.

The unwritten process piece-ban was based on the golden rule of hard news which was that information (a.k.a. content) was the only thing that mattered and anything that drew attention away from the hard-won facts was irrelevant at best and at worst, deeply suspect. Narrative and “colour” (i.e. descriptive details or pacing that drew the reader in) was frowned upon as irrelevant and suspicious. Jokes and literary flourishes were the domain of columnists — usually young blonde female ones who’d been relegated to the weekend Style section for the purposes of light entertainment. Ahem. The soft sections, colloquially known as the “the pansy patch,” (yes really) was where I spent most of my broadsheet career such as it was, and it was there that I developed my commanding voice and erudite world view.

The newsmen viewed the pansy patch as a necessary frivolity invented to sell something called “print advertising,” (if you’re under thirty five, feel free to google it, print advertising was a Total Thing for like two hundred years, I swear down). Real reporters were not writers or storytellers. They traded in facts, not narrative — they did not have opinions. Like the editors, th real reporters were meant to be heard and not seen. Almost all of them were extremely self-serious, unhappily married men in elbow patches who were trying and failing quit smoking². Their job was to inform readers, not to pander or seduce. The only people who talked openly about money were the business reporters. There were no real metrics, just quarterly circulation reports that nobody put much stock in because they were rumoured to be fudged by the ad executives who were so far beneath our contempt they did not even get parking spaces on roof. By the early 2000s the newsroom had struck an iceberg, the water was pouring in the hold, the ad guys were drowning down below but we waltzed on, oblivious. It wasn’t until they took away the cab chits that we realised something very, very weird was going on.

Whether the senior editorial antipathy toward process pieces at the time was a cause or symptom of the impending disaster, I do not know. But the received wisdom was clear: No one wants to know how the sausage is made.

The newsmen were wrong about a lot of things but at least in this case it was a noble error. It’s self-evident now that readers who are fascinated by the news are also (understandably) very interested in knowing how the news gets made. The tastier and more complicated the sausage, the more curious we are about its provenance. Is it beef or pork? Grass fed or free-range? Was the it ethically produced? Cured or smoked? Local or imported? Who was the farmer, the butcher the chef?

Today, at even in the hardest of hard news organisations, process pieces are pretty much standard fare. The Daily podcast is essentially an audio sausage recipe book. Reporters come on and open their notebooks, explain how they got the scoop. it makes sense. In the age of misinformation, a process piece engenders public trust. Transparency is good. It’s also an excellent marketing technique. Telling the story behind the story allows an embattled big media organisation to feed their core audience’s appetite for insider-ish details whilst simultaneously congratulating themselves on a job well done. And why shouldn’t they?

I grew up in a family of journalists and then married one, which is a bit like being raised in a slaughterhouse and then eloping with a butcher. For most of my life, dinner table conversation primarily revolved around discussions of meat grinders and intestinal casings and where to source the best oregano. But today, in the age of social media — and especially here on Substack — even I am beginning to hit the wall. On this platform I have officially reached peak sausage. My tolerance and attention span for process pieces is finally at a saturation point. I really, really do not want to read about the platform on the platform anymore.

If this is true of me (a process-piece-loving former legacy media columnist) I worry about how ‘real people’ feel, by which I mean readers. I know Substack is meant to be a writer’s platform, but surely we need more readers than writers for this thing to actually work?

The average reader probably doesn’t mind the odd process piece — the problem is with us: The writers. We absolutely love process pieces. Why? Because like everybody else we love reading about ourselves and what matters specifically to us. Back in the old days we had editors and managers to keep us in check, but here on Substack writers are left to run amok. My concern is that if we start going on and on and on to each other about platform we’re on, it’s likely the readers will get bored and go elsewhere. And then we’ll be screwed.

And yes I get the hypocritical irony that this essay is in fact process piece about why process pieces suck on the same platform I’m talking about. Please forgive me that, because I think the more pressing point here is that writers need to focus on what interests us outside of the process of how we make money or the platform we happen to be on. If we can’t do so, what are we doing here anyway, trying to survive in the wilderness?

In recent years I’ve been reticent about using social media for a whole bunch of reasons, but the main one is that sometimes it feels as if the primary purpose of its own existence is to talk about itself to itself. Twitter is constantly roiling with conversations about Twitter. The same is more or less true of YouTube and Facebook, even silly old Instagram. Dating apps are even worse.³

Substack seemed different — let’s assume it still is, I haven't given up hope! — but lately it feels a bit like a sausage making test kitchen gone into overdrive. It’s not so much the hand-wringing and virtue-signalling over free speech vs. regulation (which is at least difficult conversation worth having) but the endless churn of service process pieces on metrics and growth and the plethora of “How To” guides for other Substackers on how to do Substack right.

Many Substack process pieces I’ve read lately are uninspiring humblebrags on the topic of success. Pieces like this fill me with dread because they seem to imply there’s some kind of magic formula for gaining a readership and that if we all just adopted it as writers, we’d be home free, safe and sound, pension sorted — when clearly this is nonsense. The fact is, none of us are safe out here. And if everyone starts doing the same thing, readers will vote with their feet. Trust me, I lived through the naughties, the era of scrambling editors and panicked redesigns. None of it worked.

I’ve never been anything but a writer which means I have very few marketable skills. But I have learned a few things from living through the legacy media panic years, and here is the lesson: Chasing the numbers is a race to the bottom — an anxious tail wagging a dying dog.

I’ve spent the first decade and a half of my career writing for the mainstream media and big publishing organisations, then a couple of years ago I decided to start this newsletter on a whim. Substack now brings in a reasonable proportion of my income, but unlike say, a column or a contract, it ebbs and it flows. My strategy for success on here is simple: I try really, really fucking hard not to think about the numbers. Instead, I try to turn my attention to the stuff that inspires and excites me. Also, I try to always write in my own voice and to be scrupulously honest because no one can stop me.

Out here in the wilderness, you basically eat what you kill. The upside of no rules is obvious (no rules!), the downside is frightening: No guaranteed cheque. But don’t assume that by adopting someone else’s rules or following a How To guide you can ensure your own economic security on Substack or anywhere else. You can’t. There really is no failsafe formula. The sands are shifting with the tides and the tides are bigger than all of us. Sorry. Truth hurts.

The only reall successes I’ve ever had as a writer have come from taking creative risks that terrified me. Fliers on a hunch. Because of this, I’ve failed and been rejected more times than I can count. But I’ve also done things I’m proud of, things that more or less came off. But one thing that never, ever really worked for me was treading water, playing it safe. If you want to do that you should probably be working in an office. Trying to anticipate what your audience wants when you don’t even know who your audience is, when the platform is always changing, is a mug’s game. The only people I’ve ever really tried to please were not my paymasters or even my “readers” but my favourite editors. I did so because I viewed them as collaborators and friends — authoritative creative partners who were as invested in the quality of the work as I was. Also I’m a validation junkie and I had immense respect for my favourite editors. I wanted their praise and I strove to get it!

While the absence of bad editors on Substack is a massive relief, the absence of good ones makes me sad. I miss my good editors terribly. It also depresses me that many young talented writers on here have never had the pleasure of working with one — and the number of process pieces is a testimony to the absence of good editors, I’m afraid.

Substack, like any media platform, likes to talk about itself. It produces loads of excellent and informative content on how to do Substack right, which makes perfect sense. Talking about Substack is, after all, is a big part of Substack’s job. It’s a company, a brand, and brands needs to market itself. That I get. What I don’t get is why writers are doing it. Why not let Substack market us, rather than the other way around? If this platform is going to remain relevant, by which I mean relevant to lay-readers as well as writers, we need to keep our eye on the ball and remember how we all wound up here in the first place. There’s no point in following the rules when the rules can be changed at any time. What I really mean is that writers need to write more about the stuff that genuinely interests us and worry less about what will or won’t “pull.”

More than anything we need to stop with the process pieces about the platform itself, because at this point it really is getting dull — and dullness is a threat to our collective survival. We need to support each other, hone our own voices, let our curiosity and imagination lead us, rather than our vanity or fears about metrics. We need to spend less time eyeing up the dashboard and more time time walking and reading and thinking about stuff.

1. or I happen to change my mind

2. Sadly all of them have since died of lung cancer

3. I did a brief turn on Tinder last year and in addition to the worryingly disproportionate number of tragic lost souls, what I mostly discovered was a lot of deeply anxious people complaining bitterly to each other about the app on the app. In the end, it left me bereft.