A little newsletter scepticism

Beehiiv is doing a journalism thing:

Beehiiv, a newsletter startup taking aim at Substack, says it's making a "multi-million dollar investment" to create a new "beehiiv Media Collective" of journalists on its platform.

This sounds oddly familiar.

Ghost in 2017:

Our goal is to find three fantastic new publishers to work with and help them grow their audiences throughout 2017, as we build out these features (and others) explicitly around their needs. In addition, we'll be offering up $45,000 in Ghost(Pro) credit, along with access to our internal tools, data, and technology partners.

(I even wrote about it, back then.)

Substack in 2021:

With Substack Pro, we pay a writer an upfront sum to cover their first year on the platform. The idea is that the payment can be more attractive to a writer than a salary, so they don’t have to stay in a job (or take one) that’s less interesting to them than being independent. In return for that financial security, a Pro writer agrees to let Substack keep 85% of the subscription revenue in that first year. After that year, the deal flips, so that the writer no longer gets a minimum guarantee but from then on keeps 90% of the subscription revenue – which, if we’ve made our bet well, will be a larger overall dollar amount.

A variety of models, but the same basic idea: an emerging platform will help fund journalists to get going on its platform. Every four years, a platform has a shot at this. Ben Werdmuller asks the obvious question:

The real question is how long this fund will last, and whether the journalists who take advantage of it will sink or swim when it inevitably comes to an end. Hopefully everyone who takes part uses the time to become self-sufficient.

I'm… sceptical. You don't hear much about the Ghost and Substack efforts do you? There's a reason for that…