The way for media companies to retain top talent in an age of Substack is to not try to prevent inevitable departures but to invest in them.

For example, in this case, it would have been smart for The Atlantic to say to Derek: “We’ll support you as you go to Substack. Keep the brand affiliation, we’ll occasionally republish your stuff, and you can have access to our editors, legal team, and content network as needed. We’ll come to some sort of agreement on revenue share and cross-marketing, and we will help each other grow.”