Nicholas Thompson

Why do they dominate on Substack?

Why do they dominate all these new media forums?

Partly because they're innovative, creative, but also partly because they haven't been able, like they're not able to make their careers in the New York Times.

And so that's a really interesting lesson for a place like the Atlantic where you have to, like we have a much broader spectrum of writers and staffers and certainly any other media place that I worked, any other place in New York media.

But if you don't have a really broad spectrum for you to welcome, well, then they're going to leave and then they're going to start competitors in new forms and you're going to be in trouble, like Barry and Substack.

Right.

I mean, that is one of the things that Substack has done most effectively.

And I think they have benefited

by the bifurcation of social media, right?

As social media has collapsed, it has allowed the sort of the social network that Substack built underneath it, which seemed, it seemed totally barren, right?

Like the sort of the feed and the recommendation stuff a couple of years ago, now it's thriving, right?

And that's partly due to the bifurcation of social media.

It's due to like, you know, the way Elon has, you know, changed Twitter.

So that is all true.

I will add though, that traditional publications like

If you write for The Atlantic, we will take your essay and we will put it in a million four subscribers, 600,000 can get the print issue.

We will use the United States Postal Service to deliver people.

There are still ways that you can get.

We do have social feeds.

We do have websites.