American journalist Sari Botton left her job assuming another role would soon – or at least eventually – follow.
Botton had spent decades as a writer and editor, including as an essays editor for Longreads. She had experience, judgement and a track record. But like many journalists, especially those of a certain age, she found the industry she loved no longer loved her back.
“At 54 I left one job assuming I’d be able to get another,” Botton told Influencing. “Then I had difficulty even getting interviews at places where I should have been a shoo-in.”
When Botton did manage to land a first-round interview, they rarely went well.
“I was being interviewed by people 25 years younger than me, and they were speaking to me in condescending ways, saying things like, ‘Are you sure that after all these years it’s not time for you to move onto something else?’” Botton said.
“I didn’t get second interviews, and in many places I couldn’t get a first one. The jobs all went to 30- to 35-year-olds.”
That story will sound grimly familiar to many Australian journalists, given the shrinking newsrooms and freelance budgets of recent years.
But Botton’s story didn’t end with her dropping out of the media industry.
In 2021, she launched Oldster, a Substack about ageing. Perhaps because ageing is a universal experience, Oldster became wildly popular, with over 84,000 subscribers at the time of writing. Oldster did well enough that Botton launched another Substack, Memoir Land, covering memoirs and personal essays, which currently has over 35,000 subscribers.
Botton, who is now 60, is publishing Oldster four times a week, Memoir Land five days a week, and working 70 hours a week.
Ironically, the media industry that was previously so uninterested in Botton’s services has been keen to cover her feel-good Substack success story. In a recent New York Times article entitled ‘When Life Gave Her Ageism, She Created Oldster’, Botton observes, “Everyone who’s alive and aging is an oldster.”
Botton believes journalists – especially those struggling to find work – have little to lose by trying new things, including launching a Substack.
“Journalism and media outlets have all been tanking, increasingly, for some time,” she said. “Finding a way to differentiate yourself can help you stand out, and give you an advantage in a narrowing field. Also, as in any field, it’s best to keep adding skills and services, so that you can be versatile, and at the top of your game when opportunity knocks.”
On that point, Botton emphasises journalists shouldn’t underestimate the skills they possess and should think laterally about how they can apply them in different contexts.
“In most other fields, age and experience are highly valued,” she said. “The longer you’ve been at something, the more you bring to it, and the better you are. You only genuinely ‘age out’ when you stop learning new things and stop adding to your skill set. You need to keep up, so that you can go toe-to-toe with younger colleagues.”
Another brutal market
The good news about launching a Substack, especially for those with a content-creation background, is that there are few barriers to entry. That’s also the bad news, given low barriers create crowded markets, which tend to produce winner-takes-most outcomes – as many a podcaster, YouTube influencer and OnlyFans model has discovered.
The world’s top Substackers – many of whom built a profile working at legacy media outlets – can generate six-figure and sometimes even seven-figure incomes from subscription revenue.
But the large majority of Substackers make little to no money.
Over in the US, high-profile journos such as Andrew Sullivan, Matt Taibbi and Matthew Yglesias make a good living via their Substacks. There are Australian journalists with popular Substacks – Max Brearley, Tim Burrowes, Tim Dunlop and Bri Lee, for example – but it’s unlikely any of them are generating anywhere near the revenue of their American counterparts.
It’s not all about the money
A decade or so ago, podcasts became ‘the thing’ journos launched when legacy media outlets could no longer give them enough money, space, status, freedom or security. It offered a cheap way to build an audience and rewarded a distinctive voice, niche expertise and consistency.
It looked deceptively easy from the outside only to prove brutally difficult once the novelty wore off.
Substack now plays a similar role for writers.
It allows journalists to publish without waiting for a commissioning editor, a staff job, a section budget or permission from a masthead obsessively focused on traffic, subscriptions, risk management and cost control. It also gives writers a more direct relationship with readers.
But the unfortunate reality is that most Substackers, even those with plenty of content-creation experience, will never generate a liveable income from their Substack.
But for many, the hoped-for rewards aren’t just financial.When Influencing interviewed recently retrenched journalist Jackson Langford, he was realistic about the prospect of his newsletter ever generating revenue. His first post on cc: jackson langford was titled “Another laid-off writer has launched a Substack!” but Langford told Influencing his motivations for launching the Substack weren’t entirely financial.
“I can exercise my creativity and tell whatever story I want to tell without anyone telling me I can’t do that,” he said. “My primary focus with the Substack was to get back to why I fell in love with what I do without having to worry about the state of the industry.”
That may be the real appeal of Substack for journalists. It is unlikely to save most of them financially. But it can give them a place to keep publishing, keep experimenting and build a direct relationship with readers.
In that sense, the comparison with podcasts is apt – Substack newsletters are easy to start, hard to sustain, and eternally seductive because they offer journalists a small patch of ground they can call their own.
And, just possibly, the chance to make it big doing something they love.