What is Substack for?

A new way to engage with The Point

When we started The Point back in 2009, we hoped the magazine would not only be a place where readers would encounter writing that could help them address basic questions in their lives, but also that it would inspire, in the broader culture, a more serious and thoughtful public conversation. On this last point, I at least was often to be disappointed. However much our core readers appreciated the magazine’s commitment to pluralism and open-ended dialogue, public discourse seemed for a long time to move in the opposite direction, culminating during Trump’s first term in a cultural conversation that was almost cartoonishly cruel and incurious. Perhaps most dispiriting was the fact that so many academics and public intellectuals, far from distancing themselves from the zero-sum rhetorical tactics that became the hallmark of that period, instead became tenacious adherents of them.

Although we now find ourselves on the brink of a second Trump presidency, the cultural conversation seems slowly to be changing—and some of that change has been caused by, or is at least reflected in, the writing on this platform. The Point is starting this Substack in part because this is where we’re encountering the kind of diverse, honest, and intellectually rambunctious conversation we have always wanted to participate in. This is not only a matter of promoting better manners and a longer attention span for argument—at least in comparison to Twitter/X—though those things are not inconsequential. Especially in the wake of the election, I’ve been struck by how much closer to the world the things I read on Substack seem to be, in comparison with what is being published in mainstream publications. Whereas established outlets are splitting their energy between recycling their greatest hits from Trump’s first term and managing the emotions of their readership, writers on Substack have been offering original analysis of long-term trends that led to what happened, and grappling honestly with how they feel about it. In a concentrated sample, this contrast suggests the larger trends in media that created a demand for Substack in the first place, and will likely continue to fuel its growth.

None of this means we think everything about Substack is great, or that everything about legacy media is bad, as the dialogue we’ll be sharing in one of our first posts will make clear. One of our editors, Becca Rothfeld, has already raised some of the salient arguments for more traditional publishing conventions like editing, something I personally have a great stake in. I would also recommend the experience of paging through one of The Point’s print issues above anything you can do on a screen, and there is still no replacement, in my opinion, for the way a magazine can cultivate a sensibility—one that is coherent but also capacious enough to allow for differences of emphasis and perspective—among a larger group of writers and readers.

Accordingly we plan to use this Substack in several ways that we hope will complement, rather than be a substitute for, the print magazine. One will be to post thoughtful dialogues between writers with different perspectives on controversial issues, which is a continuation of a genre we’ve long encouraged in the magazine but that seems especially well-suited for Substack. Another will be to let our editors comment on wider trends in media and intellectual culture, in a shorter and more casual form than we would usually do on The Point’s website. A third will be to preview articles and events related to the magazine. If you are already a Point subscriber or reader, we hope you will find a new way to engage here with the things we publish (finally a comments section!). If you’re new to the magazine, we hope you’ll like what you discover here and feel inspired to follow the links to the website and then… into the wilderness of print.

Finally, we could think of no better way for The Point to begin using Substack than to present a conversation that is at its core about the question: What is Substack for? Our first post, not counting this introduction, will be an exchange between Point editor Becca Rothfeld and cultural critic Sam Kahn that is both about Substack and started on Substack, with posts by Becca and then Sam on the limitations and virtues of the platform, in comparison with other forms of publishing and media. The conversation we will post tomorrow morning picks up and expands on that initial exchange, touching on broader questions about the value of the “institutional model” of legacy media, the importance of platforms for outsider writing, and the conflict between the “forces of atomization and the forces of community.” We hope it will give you something to think about.

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