Casey Newton is a happy journalist.
He has loyal readers, a recognized competence in his field (Gafa) and enough to live from it.
For two weeks, however, this forty-something has no more writing.
Its readers subscribe directly to its paid newsletter, Platformer, at a monthly rate of $ 10.
It belongs to this new generation of journalists who choose to become their own media.
There is something for everyone, in politics, economy, culture, parenthood ...
Like Casey Newton, these solo journalists use the services of newsletters sending platforms, such as Substack or Ghost, which provide them with a turnkey distribution tool.
These men and women become their own editors, maintaining a personal and exclusive relationship with their readers, from the choice of subjects to the rhythm of their distribution.
Telegraph and newsletter
This new form of journalism calls into question the traditional balance of the media.
Since the rise of the large press in the 19th century, editorial staff has been the dominant model.
Even freelance journalists - the "freelance" - are in a way attached to it.
They submit their articles to a chief editor, who orders them, rereads them and distributes them.
This concentration is inherited from technical and economic imperatives.
In the newspapers, the hubs of information, the news arrived by telegraph and left by the presses, housed in the basements.
In Paris, the press district, the information lung, stretched from the 2nd arrondissement to the borders of the 9th arrondissement, where
Le Figaro
is still located today.
Two modern tools are revolutionizing this bicentennial operation: the newsletter and the digital subscription.
Armed in this way, journalists can hope to build up a base of loyal readers on their own and derive lasting income from it.
“
If you can persuade 2,000 people to pay you $ 5 a month, you'll make $ 100,000 a year.
It's not simple.
It takes time, dedication, but it's more possible than ever,
”praises Hamish McKenzie, co-founder of Substack and himself a former journalist, in a long explanatory message.
The situation has changed a lot since blogging, which in the 2000s was based on the vagaries of the race for traffic and online advertising.
To attract large feathers, Substack does not hesitate to grant advances of several tens of thousands of dollars and to provide social and legal coverage.
The start-up, created three years ago, raised $ 13.5 million in 2019 from the a16z fund run by Andreessen Horowitz, a famous Silicon Valley entrepreneur.
Like an Uber and a Deliveroo, in transport and catering, it takes part of the subscriptions of these self-employed journalists.
It is the advent of the “
third decoupling
” of capitalism that Branko Milanovic evokes (
Le capitalisme sans rival
, 2020), with workers who are no longer attached to physical places, but can be scattered all over the world.
Individualization of work
Social networks, especially Twitter, have greatly contributed to this individualization.
Journalists, freelance or writing, have learned to work on their image and build a personal audience.
Some media have spotted this trend, and offer their journalists to keep newsletters, within their editorial staff.
In
Le Figaro
, these “letters from journalists” each have several thousand registrants.
Readers are also more inclined to pay, whether through mainstream media sites, or through project funding schemes, like Patreon.
Is this solitary journalism a model for the future?
In a battered newspaper market (in the United States, nearly half of newspaper jobs have been cut in ten years), paid and individual newsletters are seen as an El Dorado right now.
Despite the relays on social networks, not all journalists can claim to create their own audience.
Casey Newton had 30,000 subscribers to his free newsletter launched on the high-tech site
The Verge
, and whose contact base he was able to recover.
Also, some are already planning to regroup, in order to share their costs and reach more readers.
Until getting back to working as a team, and recreating a community of editors organized around the same editorial line?
Behind the technical and economic aspect, a newspaper is also a social body in its own right, with its brilliance, its collegiality, its history, "
the particular smell of its newsrooms
" (Maupassant), which goes beyond the addition of individual talents.
