I Truly Believe THIS is the Future of Independent Journalism
So many people have told me that paying for all of the good independent journalists is impossible. The new Trustfnd bundle is an important step towards giving the reading public what they want.
Much has been written about the current state of journalism. The industry is, generally, in the shitter. The vibrant online journalism culture that I came up with in a decade ago is basically gone. An ever shrinking group of perennially employed lefty journalists and editors circulate between an ever smaller group of available jobs.
It's the world's most depressing game of musical chairs. The last one out, please turn off the lights.
In the last 3 years, nearly 10,000 journalism jobs have simply disappeared. Since 2008, newsroom staff positions have dropped by 26%. Right wing billionaires are snapping up mainstream media outlets as often as possible. Right wing media is constantly supported by millions in funds from right wing billionaires. Traditionally employed lefty journalism is practically in freefall.
Even a national journalism staple like the Washington Post recently shed hundreds of jobs, despite the fact that the interest its owner Jeff Bezos earns on his savings account could probably fund the publication each year.
This has resulted in regular floods of new newsletters and blogs as previously employed journalists seek to replace their income through building up their own subscription base every time there is a new set of layoffs.
This isn't necessarily a good thing for journalism as a whole. Independent journalists do not have traditional institutional protections, so if a subject sues them, they do not have a more powerful and well funded operation backing them. They also don't necessarily have the funds to do their own deep and long investigative work.
This has resulted in the proliferation of the Substack Take Economy that is not so much breaking news or discovering new stories, but commenting on and analyzing an steadily shrinking pipeline of breaking news by traditional outlets.
But it's a good thing when journalists can lose their jobs or (in my case) never really have a long time journalism job in the first place, and can make a living.
If we're going to build an independent media sphere that is someday able to fund its own legal defense and investigative work, we need an atmosphere where independent journalists can make a living in the first place.
We are still early in that building process.
But it's impossible for readers to support every journalist. You could, for example, subscribe to the New York Times for $30/mo and get access to the fruits of the organization's 1700 journalists, or you could subscribe to this newsletter, Burns Notice, for $4/month and enjoy the fruits of one journalist.
The economics of supporting my newsletter compared to a Times subscription are hard to justify, but a lot of people value what I bring to the journalism sphere enough to support me here.
The costs for readers to support as many independent journalists as they want to can escalate quickly, as this recent Nieman Labs piece explained. That's why I teamed up with independent journalists Marisa Kabas and Kat Tenbarge on our Indie Media Bundle with Trustfnd.
For just $8.50, you will get a 30 day subscription to all three of our newsletters. Trustfnd is able to see if you're already subscribed to one of our newsletters and automatically subtract the cost of that sub from the total price of the bundle (with the notable exception of my Patreon subcribers as Patreon is a closed system that can't be accessed by Trustfnd).
The deal let's folks subscribe to each of us at half price for a month.
Initially, none of us really knew how it would go. We were asked at the start to predict how many bundles we would sell. Kat didn't bet, Marisa said we'd sell 300.
I said we'd sell 30. I'm always the Eeyore of whatever group I'm in.
In the first week, we sold over 500, blowing away all of our initial expectations. This tells me the bundle approach potentially solves one of the biggest newsletter consumer pain points: cost.
What blew me away the most is that 77% of our bundle sales were to folks who hadn't subscribed to any of us previously. That's about 400 people who previously weren't paying to subscribe to any of us, who now support all of us.
I'm excited about the possibilities this could bring down the line. My Cancel Me, Daddy podcast co-host, Christine Grimaldi, just recently launched her own newsletter called Vendetta, and we're already in the beginning stages of creating a "Cancel Me, Daddy Bundle" where listeners can subscribe to both of us for a deep discount.
The risk with these bundles for creators is that eventually everyone will just be getting a deep discount on their subscription prices, resulting in less income overall. First, I think this is a real risk, but the early evidence is that these offers are prompting more brand new subscribers to pay us for our journalism. The discount might result in a smaller share of the pie of subscription funds, but the overall pie is getting larger through bundling.
In other words, if bundling means the average person can now afford to support 12 newsletters when before they could only support 5, this will create growth for more independent journalists in the long term, because the number of subscriptions available to sell in total goes up.
Last year, I toiled and scraped away at growing my subscriber base. I started the year with 450 paid subscribers and begged, discounted, and cajoled my way into more than doubling that number, clearing my goal of reaching 1000 total paid subscribers on New Year's Eve last year.
That was growth of 550 new paid subscribers. With the Indie Media Bundle, we have sold about 520 new subscriptions in about a week. Incredible.
If independent, reader supported independent journalism really is the future of the new business, then bundling will be the key to making that future work for readers.
I couldn't be more proud to be in on the ground floor of this. We are capable of building a better journalism industry on our own.
Thank you so much for reading! Together, let's build a better journalism.
From now until the end of April, I'm offering 50% off an annual subscription to Burns Notice, click here!
For the Trustfnd Bundle, click here!
