(If you clicked this post looking for an alternative to Substack, try Ghost. I use it for my little bean blog, and have been quite pleased. I've also heard that Buttondown is nice, but haven't tried it.)
I have a hunch.
A month ago I posted an idea, and haven't been able to shake it. If I was currently working in a newsroom, I'd be excited to test my theory. But since I'm not, I figured I'd write it up in the hope that somebody else might give it a shot. (And, you know, save journalism or something.)
Substack is one of today's big, disruptive things that everybody is either worried about or excited about — and we probably gotta get on it if we want to survive, or something. At least that's what I read. The Washington Post is doing some kind of partnership with them and really I don't care about the details except that Substack is provably bad, and partnering with them seems, at best, naive and incurious.
But there's something about the Substack phenomena that I think we all might learn a lot from.
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It's not that newsletters are magic. (Though they are indeed a very useful tool for reaching readers who are not glued to social media, and also great for building a direct relationship with people who might give you money.)
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And it's not that the Substack platform is magic. (If anything, it seems to me that the dark patterns they're exploiting will blow up in their faces.)
My hunch is that the lesson is much simpler, and easily replicable on any platform. It's that people like first-person perspectives on the news.
Forgive me for stating the obvious, but the first-person format just keeps emerging with every new medium. If it's bloggers, Youtube creators, influencers on TikTok or individual reporters leaving their newsrooms and starting a newsletter. My bet is that it's not the platform, it's the format. The perspective of the individual is the key. First-person news delivery works.
Yet, we resist it. That's what other people do. Not us. Not real journalists. And, bless y'all, but shit, journalists are both the most curious and skeptical-of-institutions people I've ever worked with, yet still so fucking hung up on our own dogma.
Funny thing is that we (news organizations) already do this, all the time. Why do newspapers have columnists? Because people like them! My team built the Chicago Tribune's election center for a few years, and the dirty secret of it all was that the editorial pieces were waaaay more popular than the work coming out of the newsroom. Sure, opinion writers are often cranky and wrong, but we can improve upon that!
Similarly, I've long argued that there's something special to learn from audio news. In a spoken word story the reporter is always present in the final product. "I am standing at the corner of..." "We spoke with... and here's what they said..." etc., etc. It is my belief that hearing the interviewer — not just the interviewee — is key to the relationship listeners have with public radio and podcasters. It's not an institutional voice, it's an individual voice. They may be doing straight news, but the humanity comes through in the format, in stark contrast to how newspaper reporters and editors are trained to write a story.
(And, for what it's worth, that obvious humanity is, IMO, a key reason that public radio has excelled for decades at member-supported business models. The host, reporter, and person reading the traffic report are all your neighbors — they live here too, and we're all in this together. But that's a topic for another post.)
How about a third example? When I was running product things at Spirited Media, formerly the home of Denverite, Billy Penn and The Incline (RIP), we found that our morning newsletters resonated with readers when they were written from a first-person perspective. The author of the email would write an introduction in their own voice. It might have been as simple as talking about the weather, but it made a big difference to readers! I told my teammates then, and I'll repeat the advice to anyone who will listen: Don't just email people links and headlines! Tell me why you picked it!
It might be obvious by now where I'm going with this, but here's my advice to newsrooms:
- People like individual perspectives. Stories that are obviously written by a person are both popular and good at persuading readers to pay for the news.
- And we must get better at growth and fundraising!
- So let's try writing our everyday news stories in the first person.
The writing doesn't have to be opinionated — I'm not advocating that all reporters become columnists — but it would be very interesting, maybe even transformational, to see some regular-ass news stories written as if a goddamned human reported them. Because they did!
What I'm arguing for is not a change in medium, but a change in format. Sure, there's some interesting stuff happening on Substack and TikTok and the rest, but I truly believe that the medium is not actually the killer factor here. It's just that people have taken to these mediums to report in a more natural fashion. They are following the lead of other folks who have successfully demonstrated that a first-person format is appealing and engaging.
(Related: If you're not familiar with Jay Rosen's take on the "view from nowhere", read up. In this post I'm advocating for fewer changes than Jay, but IMO, first-person writing is a step in the right direction.)
If I had a newsroom to lead, I'd be testing these ideas right now. But I don't. And this seems important! Maybe you want to give it a shot?
The experiment
How do we figure out if this is a good idea?
On one hand, it's a relatively simple suggestion. Just tell everyone to write news stories in the first person. Unfortunately, that's not how people work. Our jobs — for better or worse — are our identities. And a change to that job is therefore a threat to our very selves. So, as agents of change, we must tread lightly and be extremely thoughtful about how fucking afraid people will be. (And how absolutely shitty even the best people can be when they're feeling backed into a corner... organizational change is hard.)
Anyway! I'd start small. Pick a desk. Or maybe even a single reporter. (Someone who is already thinking of starting their own newsletter if you can find one!) Pick a topic that's uncontroversial — think sports or dining, not politics — and set the parameters: You are encouraged to write in the first person. Instead of "[person] said", how about "[person] told me".
But I wouldn't be too prescriptive. We're still working this out! Maybe share some example newsletters? I don't know. It's doubtful that we'll find our inspiration from actual radio scripts — those aren't good reading — but the spirit of the radio, beginning the day with a friendly voice, etc., is probably a fine place to start.
And then watch closely for differences in audience behavior. Here's what I'd measure:
- Pageviews: A blunt instrument, but if our first-person stories are gaining traction, that's a signal.
- Signups: Do these stories create more signups? Do they create a higher rate of signups (signups per user) than their prior work? Than other stories on the site?
- Subscriptions/donations: Similar to signups, though generally less frequent, so probably not as useful as an early indicator of success. But in the long run, this might be the top metric, depending on your business model.
- New readers: Do these stories bring in new readers at a higher rate (new users / total users)? Are they finding people we have not yet reached?
- Returning readers: Do these stories resonate with our most valuable audience — the people most likely to give us money?
- Members/donors: Similar to new and returning, but maybe more challenging depending on your analytics setup. Are these stories well-read among people who already give us money?
Or, in short, do the first-person stories move the needle more (or differently) than our other work? I'd give this initial test at least a month or two. You probably won't have the ability to measure all the things above, but a few will do just fine. And if you see a positive change, then — and only then — run another test.
Sadly, it's really really hard to persuade people out of their dogma, even with clear evidence. So you'll need to find another amenable partner. But I suspect that you'll already have a couple folks knocking at your door. Let them help you run another two-month test.
Even if you find success with your second experiment, you'll still probably have a newsroom full of haters. And who can blame them? This is not what we were taught! But if you're finding traction, and can prove it, you might have a shot at changing some people's minds. I'd probably make some nice charts, but really, you'll probably find more success leaning on testimonials. Reporters and editors, like anyone else, are more persuaded by stories than data.
What are your readers saying? Are these reporters getting more emails? More thoughtful comments? Have their numbers on Bluesky soared? What do people say when they donate? I'm the kind of person who prefers hard evidence, but I'm also a nerd who'd sneak a Rush reference into a blog post — I'm not who you're trying to persuade. (Give Erika Hall's excellent book, Just Enough Research, a read if you really want to dig in.)
Why bother?
What's the point of all this? Why test a new format when you can adopt a new medium? Why not just partner with Substack?
Because we need to own our shit, y'all.
Our refusal to change is not good, for our audience, our cities, our businesses and our goddamned jobs. I'm sick and tired of newsrooms leaning on vendors and platforms to be the innovators. We must build our own futures.
Once upon a time, not very long ago, news organizations were actively inventing new ways for people to be informed and participate in our democracy. (The public radio news format was invented, y'all! Recently!)
But "what seems to work" has been replaced in our organizations with "how it's done". Our formats have calcified as a matter of efficiency. And we gotta shake that shit off, get messy, and invent the new basics. It'll be a slog, and our processes will have to change. But that's why we start small and test our ideas as we go.
So please, spread the word! And if you run a test, let me know? I'd love to follow along!