Hi, I'm Dan Premack and welcome to Axios Recap, presented by Bridge Bank.

Today's Friday, September 25th.

Halloween candy sales are up, hopes for next year's carnival are down, and we're focused on the future of media.

For anyone who even casually follows the media business, it's no sense. future of media.

For anyone who even casually follows the media business, it's no secret that the traditional model is under strain, if not outright broken.

Lots of big city dailies, small city dailies, and regional weeklies have folded after

there weren't enough digital dimes to make up for all the lost

print dollars. Magazines, they're under similar pressure, and even a whole generation of

web-first publications have either fallen or significantly shrunk their staffs. And now these media

groups, plus those that have actually survived the newsroom purges,

are facing a new challenge.

High-profile journalists going out on their own,

enabled by a suite of tech startups that not only let themselves publish, but make money by self-publishing.

The most notable of these is Substack, which claims more than 250,000 paying subscribers across its network, with its top 10 writers earning a collective $7 million in annualized revenue. Just this week, Substack poached

well-known tech journalist Casey Newton from The Verge, and he now joins a roster that

already included names like Matt Taibi and Heather Cox Richardson.

Through Substack, writers create newsletters that can only be accessed by paid subscriptions,

sometimes $5, $10, $15 per month. They also get a dedicated home on the web and the opportunity

to create podcasts and other additional content.

Substack, it takes a 10% commission and at some point plans to offer things like health benefits,

although it doesn't yet. In short, this is perhaps a new model for journalism,

with the journalist as writer, editor, and kind of sort of publisher. Is it the future or just a passing fad?

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