Blogging Independence: Why Legal Publishers May Want to Think Twice About Substack
Doc Searls, an American journalist, columnist, and a highly respected blogger noticed big time and explained why he’s here, on his blog, and not on Substack when Substack’s co-founder Hamish McKenzie shared this week that his company is a social media app.
My instant response was a mix of Huh? and Yuck. Because until then I thought Substack was blogging host with a newsletter business. Meanwhile, social media as we’ve known it is all silo’d and in deep ways very icky. Calling Substack “a social media app” is, at least for me, a huge downscale move…
Blogging is just publishing, plus whatever grows naturally around that. It’s a how, not a where, which makes it a much better what. And that what isn’t “a social media app.”
Anyway, my thinking isn’t complete on this, and may never be. But what Hamish wrote in that newsletter turned me off to ever blogging on Substack. I like my freedom and independence.
Legal publishers would be well served to listen to Doc. Blogs or other digital publish should be something you own and be on published on something you own or control.
Take WordPress, for example, used by close to 70% of content publishers. You own on WordPress, whether you self-host, or publish on a managed WordPress platform such as Automattic’s WordPress.com or LexBlog which is built for legal publishing you own and control.
You control your site, your domain, your archives, and your design. You can back it up, migrate it, or even leave WordPress altogether without losing your presence.
On Substack, a social media app, you’re a tenant inside someone else’s platform. You don’t fully control the technology, rules, or long-term preservation of your work. Substack has grown fast in the newsletter world, but it’s a hosted service where you are at the mercy of their business decisions.
If you want reach through newsletters, Substack can be useful. But if you want to own your presence, your content, your archives, your digital reputation and your legacy, WordPress or another open platform is the safer foundation.
Hey, I get that Substack has gotten more lawyers contributing insight on the Internet. That’s an upside for the lawyers and the public. LexBlog will archive titles and excerpts of the citable and credible legal insight being shared there.
But we just witnessed TypePad, a widely used publishing platform shut its doors and delete all content on 30 days notice, leaving LexBlog to scramble to save almost 700,000 legal blog posts and articles published by practicing lawyers, law professors and other legal professionals.
No control, a change of TypePad’s business model and all was lost. The law and its commentary builds upon itself, brick by brick, and needs permanency.
I like Substack and what it’s doing with a newsletter emphasis, but a social media app is probably not the right place for one’s legal blogging or publishing.