It’s Christmas. If you’re reading this on the day the post goes live, it’s literally Christmas. But I still didn’t want to leave you entirely without good content.
Fortunately Jesse Brown at Canadaland wrote to me a few weeks ago to propose a “feed drop:” He’d post an episode of The Paul Wells Show to his subscribers, and I’d send you an episode of Canadaland. Everyone wins: His listeners find out about me, mine find out about Canadaland, and you get your regular podcast fix.
As a bonus, the Canadaland episode I’m using features, well, me. And Jen Gerson from The Line. And, perhaps most important, Chris Best, the co-founder of Substack, the platform I use to publish my newsletter and podcast. The episode is all about the growing cultural influence of Substack, which hosts thousands of free and paid newsletters, a very small number of rich writers, and its share of controversy. From Canadaland’s show notes:
Journalists have flocked to Substack. Abandoning legacy titles to pursue self-puslishing freedom at the occasionally controversial app.
Substack has incubated Bari Weiss’s Free Press and Andrew Sullivan’s The Weekly Dish. Here in Canada, a lot of names that Canadaland listeners may be familiar with are thriving on Substack: Terry Glavin, Sam Cooper, Justin Ling, Jen Gerson and Paul Wells to name a few..
Valued at 650 million dollars and lauded as a threat to Twitter. It is a rare sign of hope and innovation and a working revenue model in a very desolate media landscape. And all of that has come with the usual share of controversies.
Top of that list was their “Nazi problem.” They garnered headlines and debates about freedom of expression when it was revealed that there were, yes, Nazi Substacks charging money. And the parent company, apparently taking their cut of those profits.
Today Substack founder Chris Best joins Jesse Brown to debate Substack’s controversies and discuss its possibilities with leading Canadian Substackers, Jen Gerson of The Line and Paul Wells.
It was a good discussion. I’m happy to pass it along. Thanks to Jesse Brown and the team at Canadaland. If you haven’t caught up to last week’s episode, which features the first half of my Holiday Show at the National Arts Centre, here it is:
I’ll send you the second half of that show — featuring a look ahead to 2025 with my mildly-partisan Panel, the excellent Montreal singer Ada Lea, and a reading from the novelist and poet Ian Williams — on New Year’s Day. Thanks as always for your support and interest. Merry Christmas, happy holidays.
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