Quoting myself at length feels more than a little bit funny. But, on the other hand, what's on my mind right now is a byproduct of the National Sawdust Log newsletter that John Hong and I compile and send out each week, more or less at 6pm each Thursday evening. You can see the complete newsletter here, if you're so inclined, but these are the two entries I have in mind:
Shadle Gets Substacked
Journalist, academic, blogger, and public musicologist Will Robin, in a recent… post? entry? episode? of his excellent Substack newsletter, Industry, exhorted writers, particularly musicologists, to repopulate the once robust blogosphere. Some colleagues accepted Robin's challenge at face value – like, for instance, first-year grad student Destinee Siebe, whose Musicology and Meandering debuted literally today. (I've been doing my bit, too.)
But others are pursuing a different path: namely, Substack, the burgeoning newsletter empire that has us all starting to wonder whether Andy Warhol's prediction about future fame might need redefinition. The latest to enlist is Doug Shadle, the voraciously online chair of the musicology department at Vanderbilt University, and one of the foremost advocates for questioning, shaking up, and discarding entire portions of received classical-music history.
Honestly, Shadle's title – The Classical Alternative – seems almost conciliatory, given his appetite for confronting tired and worn-out conventions. (The headline on the first post – "Cancel the 19th Century" – sounds a more familiar pitch.) It's a welcome addition to a burgeoning inbox—you'll definitely want to sign up now. (SS)
Also Substacked: Soho the Dog
It's hard for me to be objective about Matthew Guerrieri, who was one of my very favorite writers about classical music long before I had the pleasure and privilege of collaborating with him during my stint at the Boston Globe, and then became a friend during that brief engagement.
Guerrieri – also a composer, an author, and a cartoonist – is a formidable intellect, but always manages to couch his erudition in a tone of easy-going authority. He's lately been working as a freelance stringer for the Washington Post, and his work there forms a portion of his nascent newsletter, Soho the Dog Weekly. See more and sign up, here. (SS)
Now, these two examples I just cited are the work of professionals whose daytime occupations involve writing—and yet, somehow, Doug and Matthew find time to do this. There are plenty of others from whence these two examples came. Substack is an explosive phenomenon right now, it feels safe to say. Look at the splash page on the company's website, and you'll spot newsletters that cover any topic you might care to imagine.
I'd like to investigate the subject of Substack's seemingly instantaneous ubiquity a bit more deeply some time soon. (I'd like to investigate almost anything a bit more deeply, to be perfectly honest.) But that can wait; right now, I'm taking stock. These are the Substack newsletters to which I'm presently subscribed, in chronological order of my signing on (as best as I can recall):
- Luke O'Neill, Welcome to Hell World – Dispatches from dystopia, written by a saintly punk in his own blood. Luke was a music writer, first and foremost, when we collaborated in Boston, but music has very little to do with what's in this newsletter. There's a free tier and a paid one; I gladly contribute to Luke's humble crusade.
- William Robin, Industry – Updates and ephemera related to a book-in-progress, and also dog photos.
- Todd L. Burns, Music Journalism Insider – Precisely what the title says… interviews with writers, coverage of writing, and – if you're a paid subscriber – job listings and access to a "How to Pitch" database.
- Joshua Minsoo Kim, Tone Glow – Formerly a conventional blog about unconventional music, Tone Glow provides an outstanding mix of interviews, impossible-to-find recordings in downloadable form, and albums reviewed by a wide panel of critics, Rashomon-style.
- David Anthony, Former Clarity – A music writer based in Chicago, Anthony set out to create a self-determined platform for music writing… but quickly shifted toward a nightmarish journey through the U.S. medical-industrial complex.
- Stephen Thomas Erlewine, So It Goes – Authoritative pop-music coverage, from one of the best journalists in that sector of the business. There's a free tier open to everyone, and a paid tier that provides more substantial coverage.
- Ryo Miyauchi, This Side of Japan – Recommended by Joshua Minsoo Kim, this newsletter covers old and new Japanese pop, from the perspective of a Japanese immigrant who's grown up in the U.S.
And, finally (for now), The Classical Alternative and Soho the Dog Weekly.
Is this blogging? Perhaps it is, in a sense. The list above definitely resembles an old-school blogroll, doesn't it? (Maybe I'll turn it into one.) Certainly most of these offerings present electively formal (or not) long-form (or not) writing, meant to distribute facts and opinions via a method outside the conventional mass media.
It's a form that comes complete with its own delivery method: a great way to work around the demise of Google Reader and the hyper-commercialized infinite flatlands of Twitter and Facebook. It's cleaner and more direct than Medium—whose apparent altruism I almost distrust instinctively, for some reason. As a platform, Substack looks and feels good the way Bandcamp does among e-commerce alternatives.
What Substack lacks, and what's probably gone forever, is the robust patterns of literal connection that formed so readily and rapidly within the blogosphere. I might link to Lisa Hirsch, and she might link to Alex Ross, and he might link to Micaela Baranello, and she might link to Will Robin, and you could just follow this long and winding road through endless riches and boundless quirks, and learn a lot in so doing.
I miss that part of the blogosphere a lot. I don't get the same feeling of conversational engagement, by and large, on Facebook (which I avoid, largely for political and ethical reasons) and Twitter (where I still spend rather too much time), where would-be bloggers have to hawk their wares among the mass media spigots and the shameless grifters. And the Substack newsletters, unless you're reading them primarily on their sites of origination rather than in your inbox, feel solitary, isolated from one another, except for the occasional crossover issue like Luke O'Neill and David Anthony just pulled off.
I don't disagree with Jeffrey Moro, whose cool assessment of why blogs can't make a comeback I discovered via Will Robin. But I feel like doing this right now, for a while at least, all the same—and Substack's eminent appeal hasn't changed my mind just yet.
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