Can’t say I’m shocked that Columbia Journalism Review is leading the way in insisting that Substack, whose greatest business flaw is that it doesn’t own publisher email lists or customer payment data, is a publisher and not a platform. Just blanket assertions

What part of the free signup process is, as the author states, “discouraging” people from using Substack? Literally anyone in the world can create a Substack. Or perhaps that is the true objection.

Meanwhile this paragraph makes no sense. Independent writers are entrepreneurs, not contractors. And the only person refusing to acknowledge what Substack is is the author.

The real lesson for Substack is that they should beware of features in publications representing industries they are disrupting. CJR isn’t writing about failed Shopify merchants https://www.cjr.org/special_report/substackerati.php

Bonus screenshot: Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, and Matt Yglesias are now conservatives!