The Substack Branding and Faux Prestige Trap
Less commented upon but just as bad is the branding trap. Substack is a damn good name. It looks good, it sounds good. It’s short and crisp and unique. But now they’ve gotten people to call publications on Substack not “blogs” or “newsletters” but “substacks”. Don’t call them that. And as I griped back in December, even the way almost all Substack publications look is deliberately, if subtly, Substack-branded, not per-publication or per-writer branded.
Consider Paul Krugman. Krugman was an op-ed columnist for The New York Times from 2000–2024. But last year the Times wanted to cut him back from writing two columns a week plus his Times-hosted blog/newsletter to writing just one column per week and killing the blog. In an interview with Columbia Journalism Review early this year, Krugman also revealed that after over two decades, he’d started butting heads with his editors over style, tone, and even subject matter:
“I’ve always been very, very lightly edited on the column,” he said. “And that stopped being the case. The editing became extremely intrusive. It was very much toning down of my voice, toning down of the feel, and a lot of pressure for what I considered false equivalence.” And, increasingly, attempts “to dictate the subject.”
