What’s this all about?

I’ve been writing on Substack for more than a year now. In many ways, it’s a replacement for the blogosphere of the early 2000s, which couldn’t compete with the ease of ad-funded social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and with the reluctant move online of traditional media.

The great thing about Substack is that the subscription model encourages long-form bloglike posting, and provides writers (if they choose to ask for payment) with an incentive to keep posting.

The negative side of that is that we don’t get the engagement that was such a great part of the early blogosphere. I am just reading an interesting article, and I hit the paywall. And then, comments are restricted to paying subscribers. Substack Notes should help that, but doesn’t really seem to have taken off.

So, what I plan to do with this newsletter is some old-fashioned blogging, pointing to posts you might have missed, and plugging some of my own.