The Substack Rebels: Independent Writers Breaking Free

Alexander Hamilton, not the modern-day hip hop song and dance man, but the founder of The New York Post, and Benjamin Franklin, the wittiest of our Founding Fathers and publisher of The Philadelphia Gazette, would be appalled at what passes for freedom of the press today.

They surely didn’t revolt against King George III to one day succumb to the tyranny of Twitter. And they wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of debating the meaning of a Bill of Rights had they known that a cancel culture could nullify open debate and diversity of opinion.

Mainstream media has abdicated its responsibility to provide balanced coverage of the news of the day. It is a betrayal of journalistic ethics, a crisis in truth-telling itself. Groupthink and illiberal partisanship have pervaded media across the board. Orwell’s Newspeak is alive and well except for the absurdity that Big Brother has shrunk in stature, appearing, instead, as grievance-obsessed staffers straight out of college and self-righteous social media mobs.

Today’s public square has been reduced to a bully pulpit dominated by actual bullies. Identity politics is their calling card, racist indictments their favorite jam.

Thankfully, a small rebellion has been evolving. Several former writers of storied media powerhouses such as The New York Times, Rolling Stone, New York Magazine, The Intercept and Vox are giving new meaning to “citizen journalism”—this time led by real pros. As if out of a movie, renegade columnists such as Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, Matthew Yglesias, Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald have taken a page out of Sidney Lumet’s film “Network,” with its devastating critique of broadcast news. Through the digital platform of Substack, it is as if these journalists are shouting, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna to take it anymore!”

Several former writers and editors of storied media powerhouses such as The New York Times, Rolling Stone, New York Magazine, The Intercept and Vox are giving new meaning to “citizen journalism”—this time led by real pros.

Each had a problem with their home outlets—or rather, these venues had problems with them. So, they moved the playing field elsewhere, and on their own terms. And they are succeeding wildly. The critical mass is growing, and their former employers are taking notice.

“It’s been liberating, and lovely to reassemble the community of the old dish,” Sullivan wrote in an email, referring to his former blog. “The newsletter now goes out to 100,000 people. Without being worried about being too controversial, I can write more freely. And the pay is better than any in my career.”

“It’s been liberating, and lovely to reassemble the community of the old dish,” Sullivan wrote in an email, referring to his former blog.

These are all superstar writers who held major positions elsewhere—Sullivan, the British wunderkind who edited The New Republic, became a contributor to The New York Times and then a columnist with New York Magazine; Greenwald received a Pulitzer Prize at The Guardian; Taibbi received National Magazine and Sidney awards while at Rolling Stone; Weiss served in two major positions at The Wall Street Journal and as op-ed editor at Tablet, in addition to being an op-ed staff editor and writer at The New York Times; and after stints with The Atlantic Monthly and Slate, Yglesias co-founded Vox.

What did these august citadels of journalism receive in return for this colossal loss other than placating the mediocrity within their ranks?

The renegades are not alone. Many writers and editors have either been fired or asked to leave for any number of woke violations: calling attention to the violence associated with Black Lives Matter; raising the specter of “black-on-black crime”; citing data suggesting that peaceful protests are more effective than lawlessness; questioning Donald Trump’s collusion with the Russians; not fully supporting the pandemic lockdowns.

Yellow journalism today has an altogether new meaning—not sensationalized, but yellow from fear. A news cycle guided by tedium, not tenacity.

The staff shakeup at The New York Times editorial desk was most shocking, given its self-professed claim as the paper of record.

Senator Tom Cotton was informed that his op-ed failed to meet its editorial standards, after it was published. He had suggested that perhaps the military should be summoned to help restore order after intense days of racial rioting in cities across America. A majority of Americans agreed with him. A Morning Consult poll indicated that 58% supported supplementing local police—including 40% of “liberals” and 37% of African Americans.

No matter. Staffers at the Times insisted that this opinion was untenable, and worse, somehow posed a threat to persons of color who worked at the paper.

Instead of firing the employees who apparently didn’t know the first thing about the First Amendment, staff members of the editorial page, which included Weiss, were soon gone. The paper apologized to its readership as if a war crime had been committed, rather than a thought crime.

At The Philadelphia Inquirer an editor lost his job for the headline: “Buildings matter, too.” It was an opinion shared by 89% of the population, including 64% of African Americans. The problem is that the destruction of property—police cars, precincts and monuments, along with the looting of local businesses—has become bread and circuses for many supporters of BLM .

Apparently, news is now “unfit to print” when it reveals what most American are thinking.

The marketplace of ideas, once a vibrant clearinghouse for free speech, today has all the intellectual variety of a Soviet breadline. The First Amendment has been kidnapped by censorious scolds.

And that’s what these newly liberated writers have avoided. Suddenly untethered to woke overseers, they have written about COVID-19 vaccines, politically incorrect movie casting, the propaganda of NPR, Greek classics clashing with critical race theory, and the replacement of liberalism with a new ideology that is anything but liberal. None of these stories had a prayer of making it onto the pages of their former employers.

And that’s what makes these Substack columnists modern-day town criers. Paul Reveres with notebooks rather than on horseback. Contemporary Thomas Paines dispensing digitized common sense.

Recalling our founding generation is a useful exercise. After all, freedom of speech was not first on their minds for the First Amendment. Speech was almost an afterthought. Press was primary, which makes sense. There is no meaningful freedom of speech if the public is without complete information and diverse commentary to help them make sense of the world. Representative democracy depends on a well-informed populace, which will aid in better governmental decision making.

Today’s public square, in the form of the worldwide web, is noisier and messier, with no barriers to entry or regulatory monitors to separate truth from lies. This is the downside of democratized information. Mainstream and social media are fiendishly packaging their own truths while de-platforming those who disagree.

“Right now, we are living in an era in which people trust individuals more than they trust institutions. That’s among the reasons why Substack newsletters are taking off,” Weiss wrote in an email. “The question is: Can trustworthy institutions be built? And can a newsletter or a podcast be the seed for such an institution?”

Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro College, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He is the legal analyst for CBS News Radio. His most recent book is titled “Saving Free Speech … From Itself.”