Is Substack, the new media morphing into the mainstream media?

As the mainstream media downsize and rid themselves of their more ‘problematic’ journalists many have made Substack their home. What will that mean for our community?

Is Substack morphing into MSM?

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Podcasts (Video — Audio)

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Summary

Marlon Williams and Egberto Willies use their livestream to warn that Substack is being “gentrified” as recently laid-off cable-news personalities flood the platform, attract tens of thousands of paid subscribers on day one, erect paywalls and—by talking mainly to each other—re-create the exclusionary culture many readers came to Substack to escape.

• Star influx: Big-name reporters from CNN, MSNBC, and print dailies are landing on Substack with venture-capital backing and built-in audiences.
• Attention vacuum: These newcomers instantly dominate the discovery feed, siphoning eyeballs—and subscription dollars—away from long-time independent writers.
• Paywall creep: Celebrity newsletters and livestreams often sit behind higher pay tiers, shrinking free access to critical information.
• Lost collaboration: Unlike grassroots creators who routinely cross-promote and respond to reader DMs, the “stars” essentially keep to closed circles, replicating old-media gatekeeping.
• Community power: Since Substack’s economy is based on voluntary subscriptions, readers can still shape the platform by directing support to on-the-ground reporters, subject-matter experts, and marginalized voices.

A genuinely democratic media ecosystem flourishes when working-class audiences fund working-class storytellers, not when million-dollar parachutes follow celebrities into yet another walled garden. If subscribers redirect even a fraction of their monthly budgets toward grassroots writers, they can keep Substack from drifting into a boutique replica of legacy corporate news, ensuring that diverse, fact-rich journalism remains accessible to all.

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Premium Content (Complimentary)

Substack began as an insurgent experiment: a friction-light platform where working journalists, academics, and hobbyists could speak without a corporate editor perched on their shoulders. Five years on, that scrappy ecosystem sits at an inflection point. The 2024-25 period has seen a wave of marquee-name reporters — including Joy Reid, Jim Acosta, and scores of CNN digital writers, as well as producers from MSNBC and Fox — sprinting through Substack’s open gate after layoffs or contract non-renewals at legacy outlets.

Their arrival alters the platform’s political economy in three ways. First, it concentrates attention and money. Substack executives openly celebrate the fact that the number of writers earning seven-figure incomes is now “in the double digits.” Yet, they rarely note that the vast majority of those writers entered with broadcast-television recognition and a built-in email list. Second, it shifts cultural norms. A site once animated by mutual amplification and comment-thread collaboration now features a growing lattice of celebrity-only livestreams and paywalled chats. Third, it invites venture-capital influence. Andreessen Horowitz’s Series B stake and the new $20 million “Creator Accelerator Fund” give the company capital, but also encourage hockey-stick subscriber growth over equitable community building.

Journalism scholars warn that this convergence between old-media star power and a start-up’s demand for rapid monetization risks reproducing precisely the information asymmetries that drove audiences away from cable news in the first place. Pew Research finds that only one-third of U.S. adults now “often” get news from television, and trust in national outlets hovers in the mid-20s. Yet if Substack morphs into a premium cable bundle in newsletter form, it could leave working-class readers staring at a new set of velvet ropes. Media critics have already observed what they call “newsletter gentrification”: a surge of $8-to-$15 monthly paywalls erected by well-funded newcomers. At the same time, long-time community writers rely on tips or $5 “buy-me-a-coffee” links.

The political stakes are hard to miss. Independent civic commentary thrives when readers can move laterally from lived experience — a rail-worker’s safety blog, a midwife’s public-health column — straight to policy analysis without a corporate filter. If those lateral links collapse behind celebrity paywalls, public discourse narrows. Axios notes that the broader ad market is already wobbling under tariff-driven economic turbulence; a Substack that emulates cable could inherit the same volatility and tempt star writers to chase clicks instead of nuance.

Subscribers can vote with their wallets: splitting their limited media budgets so that at least one-half supports writers who answer their emails, cite their sources, and keep essential content outside the paywall. In other words, please support those who genuinely value their subscribers.

None of this precludes following beloved broadcast veterans. Rachel Maddow’s deep dives or Joy Reid’s historical segments enrich the dialogue. But democratic media systems, like healthy ecosystems, require biodiversity. If the star canopy grows so dense that it blocks sunlight from the understory, community knowledge withers, and oligarchic narratives reclaim the agenda. The lesson of the cable-news era is simple: consolidated platforms ventriloquize power; decentralized platforms pluralize it. Substack’s next chapter will reveal which path its users — and its investors — ultimately choose.