In the wake of the absolutely disastrous and idiotic layoffs at the Washington Post, I think it’s important for a lot of people to understand that newly homeless critics and journalists thinking about coming to Substack is a very bad thing for writers and readers since the economics of this place ensure that the media landscape will get smaller, not broader. This isn’t because there isn’t good criticism on here, but rather as institutions continue to crumble and you see an exodus to platforms, the atomization of criticism gets worse and worse.

Here’s what I mean: When you paid $20/month for the Washington Post, you get access to everything the paper was producing, including multiple critics, political coverage, and breaking news. But maybe you don’t care about politics and just want to read the books section—that’s fine, but you’re still going to pay $20 and effectively subsidize the people who care about politics but don’t care about books. Put in the simplest terms, your subscription supports an ecosystem rather than a single individual. (And those individuals in the newsroom are provided with a stable paycheck and benefits, etc.)

When that ecosystem collapses as has been happening at different rates for the last two decades, you see a rush to platforms like Substack as there are fewer and fewer options for institutional stability. The economics here are very different. If six of your favorite Washington Post writers end up here you’ll pay them ~$40/month and as individuals they’ll net maybe $50/year from a single subscription. They’ll also be competing against other writers on the platform for subscribers with limited budgets, and, I’d argue, force themselves to write about things that engage with the internal algorithmic economics on here.

Are some WaPo writers going to make successful migrations to Substack? I hope so, but I also hope people realize that this is not a replacement for a healthy institutional media ecosystem.