Financial Transparency
Someone emailed me and asked that I divulge financial information regarding my deal with Substack. She was quite aggressive, which I don’t like, but she framed it in terms of achieving the transparency necessary for gender equity. In that spirit I agreed to share the information, but publicly rather than sent to just her. It’s all below the fold. My first post was March 1st so it reflects 20 days so far. I didn’t ask whether she has requested this information from anyone else because I don’t care. It should go without saying that my doing this does not imply that anyone else has to do it too.
I feel bad about doing this only for Substack’s sake. I am not sure but I think I may have been one of the people to first draw the ire of Twitter towards the Substack Pro program. They did not tell me to keep any secrets, and they have not tried to regulate what information I share about my experience with the platform in any way, but I probably was too gabby in terms of basic manners. I have been feeling guilty about that. I wasn’t thinking, I have a problem processing some social cues others find obvious, and discretion is not among my virtues in the best of times. But after everything that’s come out already I can’t see how this hurts.
Though I’m sure the company has fancy projections that know much better than I do, I suspect it’s too early to know if they will make or lose money by giving me this advance. Similarly I have no idea if I’ll still be able to do this professionally in the future. (That’s up to all of you.) Everything I need to say about the Substack platform I said in this morning’s post, and I don’t intend to address it again. Nor do I intend to justify the money I’m making to anyone, either in this newsletter or in email. I hope to do occasional updates about subscriber counts and revenues in the future but I’ll probably forget. I’m sorry to fill your email twice in one day.
Now read the 6500 words I researched and wrote about the Nation of Islam please. Or subscribe and read this paywalled rumination of the place of reading as a hobby in the 21st century. I have a big piece about the black box of charter school lotteries coming soon. I am really ready to just write now about non-meta stuff.
