A simple vision for the future of media organizations

Support the talent rather than owning it

Art by Joro Chen, Substack’s in-house illustrator.

The media world is in transition. The legacy model that supported media organizations for generations is in tatters. It will not recover. Some legacy organizations—including the New York Times and Bloomberg—have adapted to the new reality by investing more deeply in subscription revenues and becoming primarily digital-focused operations that can succeed independently of social media, but they are the exceptions that prove the rule. The internet has fundamentally reordered the media landscape. Now is the time for the new.

The rise of new systems like traditional social media, and particularly Substack—which democratizes not only the power to publish and distribute, but also the power to build new media businesses—has obliterated the former advantages of legacy media organizations, and created new dynamics that favor an emerging class of independent voices and perspectives. As artificial intelligence gives these independents only more power, this is a trend that will neither reverse nor slow down.

Media organizations of the past, present, and future are wondering how to adapt to and build for this new reality. Here’s a simple heuristic: they should consider how they can support, rather than own, talent.

Under the old models, news organizations succeeded by aggregating talent under a specific masthead and then providing them financial security in exchange for control and ownership over the content they produced, and then claiming the majority share of the revenue resulting from that work. This model depended to a large extent on a certain number of “stars” in the organization delivering value that outstripped their compensation, effectively subsidizing the rest of the organization’s editorial operation.

The internet’s facilitation of independent media, however, has given such stars the ability to realize the full value of their work and claim it for themselves, creating a math problem for the media organizations operating on the old models.

But all is not lost for media organizations—especially those that have not yet been born. The most successful media organizations of the future will provide a structure that supports and invests in talent while sharing the financial rewards.

While the media organizations of the past built megalithic publications and channels that amassed large audiences thanks to distribution advantages (printing presses and delivery trucks; airwaves and radio frequencies), the media organizations of the future will foster constellations of more narrowly focused entities that dive deeper into niches and build trusted audiences around independent voices and perspectives. Rather than building the next CNN or New York Times, the media organizations of the future can build and support publications and channels that focus on specific locales, interest areas, trades, and personalities. They will nurture portfolios that include publications and channels that specialize in expert coverage of new world wines, English football, city halls, geopolitics, and voicey economics commentary.

In many cases, these more-focused entities will be at least partly owned by entrepreneurs who get some or most of the upside from the revenue that their entities generate, and who jointly or wholly own the content and the audience data. Many of these entrepreneurs will do at least some of the editorial work, and many will end up hiring staff to improve their autonomous publications and their areas of coverage. We are already seeing such activity within the Substack network. For example, Judd Legum found financial success with Popular Information before investing in a new reporter to run Musk Watch, a complementary publication. Hollywood business publisher The Ankler has invested in semi-autonomous publications including the Entertainment Strategy Guy and creator economy newsletter Like & Subscribe. Other publications such as The Free Press and Drop Site News demonstrate what’s possible when journalists become media entrepreneurs, building their own teams.

The larger media organizations will incentivize these entrepreneurs to be part of their network through providing services such as legal support, editing, supplementary content, marketing, sales, business playbooks, events infrastructure, and the ability to be part of a team that offers moral and professional support. In some cases, the media organizations will pay salaries and benefits such as health insurance. In return, they will claim a share of the revenue that the smaller media entities generate. In many cases, they will also get direct access to those audiences for cross-promotion, cross-selling, and marketing purposes. The media organizations will be able to claim the autonomous publishers within their network as part of their brand and accordingly benefit from the association.

The revenue opportunities that arise from these networks can be significant, encompassing direct subscriptions, advertising, events, content licensing, e-commerce, and bundling. By aggregating this revenue, the larger media organizations can then invest in further editorial work, funding investigative journalism, the hiring of more journalists, and strengthening the infrastructure that upholds journalistic standards and quality.

In a sense, such a network is not all that different from NewsCorp or Turner. The key differences can be seen in the scale of the autonomous publishing entities, and the ownership rights. The future is a multiverse of media businesses that range in scale from the micro to the macro, controlled by independent operators who can start with close to zero costs and grow on the strength of their direct relationships with their audiences. The Substack ecosystem, which continues to enrich many independent journalists and creators, reveals the mega trend. Media organizations can either watch while this trend overcomes them, or invest in it, and share in the benefits of a system that gives more power to independent publishers, creators, and entrepreneurs.

In this way, media organizations can think of themselves as similar to a platform like Substack itself. They can seek to uplift and support talent rather than own and control it, serving as facilitator rather than mediator. They will also continue to serve an important role as discoverer and developer of talent. They can tie their success to the talent’s success—and then help a billion flowers bloom. While this model can’t and won’t be the sole organizational option—it will likely live alongside publicly funded institutions, philanthropic projects, and other co-op models—it can play an important and large role in the overall media ecosystem.

My bet is that the resulting media ecosystem will be better, richer, and more valuable for a greater number of people and organizations than was previously possible. All the ingredients exist in the world for such a future to materialize: the infrastructure, the technology, the talent, and the demand. The thing that is currently in shortest supply is a base of entrepreneurs who are ready to start building this next generation of the media. Let’s hope that shortage won’t last for long.

Maybe you can help solve that?