My day with Substack began at around 10 a.m. on Thursday, with the platform’s CEO, Chris Best, telling a crowd of writers that they “deserve to get rich” and “have fun.”
It ended a little past 10 p.m. at a podcast studio office space with Substack cofounder Hamish McKenzie, eating pizza with the lingering media folk.
Substack’s big day was its first-ever media summit — “The Once and Future Media Forum” — that brought together the newsletter platform’s content creators, journalists (like me), and founders of new media startups in a sprawling five-story building in the center of SoHo, in New York City.
Feed Me’s Emily Sundberg kicked off Substack’s series of panels by interviewing TBPN’s president, Dylan Abruscato, about the tech talk show and its acquisition by OpenAI. Sundberg told Abruscato (who also worked on HQ Trivia) that his work was like that of the Velvet Underground (in that the rock band inspired many others to start bands).
“I feel like the projects that you worked on have a similar influence,” Sundberg said.
The rest of the day brought media figures onstage to talk about topics like video on Substack and the future of media from the perspective of content creators.
There was a museum of media artifacts, a swimming pool you could ogle at (but were forbidden to swim in), and a café/rooftop where creatives prepped for panels downstairs and sipped iced coffee.
Substack employees wore lanyards with signs around their necks: I work at Substack. I can make yours better. Ask me anything.
I heard someone refer to the event as “Substack Coachella.”
After a full day of panels, they closed the event with a “Substack House Party” with trays of drinks and bite-sized snacks. The venue’s rooftop kept reaching capacity, prompting a one-in, one-out policy.
Let me take you into the night.
- The guest list: Media people, talking about media, mingling with other media people. Speakers from the day, including The Free Press’ Suzy Weiss (Bari Weiss’ sister), Mad Realities cofounder Alice Ma, and actor-writer Ben Sinclair (known for his HBO series “High Maintenance”). Media reporters like Breaker’s Lachlan Cartwright (who publishes his newsletter on the Substack competitor Beehiiv) and outlets such as Bloomberg, Axios, Semafor, and Adweek. Substack-powered outlets like Byline and The Metropolitan Review. And content creators, too, including Substack food writer and video star Caroline Chambers, and Wahlid Mohammad, who got his start on Vine.
- The moment: As the venue shut down the rooftop right on time at 9 p.m., guests came pouring into the main bar. Within minutes, we were all kicked out, and the party descended down the several flights of stairs and gathered on the curb. An after-after party was swiftly thrown together, and I found myself with a gaggle of Substack employees (including McKenzie and the company’s events connoisseur, Matt Starr) and creators, as we walked down the block to the SoHo office space for Osprey Studios (a digital media and podcast company).
- The quote: “It feels like media in the early aughts,” Mary Alice Miller, who worked at Vanity Fair for nearly a decade, told me over pizza. The optimism and partying at Substack’s event brought back memories of the magazine parties of yesteryear. “Casual hangs” like the one unfolding were also commonplace, Miller said.
- The gripe: There was a promise of a surprise special musical performance. I was enticed. Someone else had thrown out Charli XCX (who, notably, has a Substack). I asked if it was Bob Dylan (it definitely wasn’t) or Jeff Tweedy (the Wilco front man who also has a Substack). It turned out to be a James Brown impersonator, who, sadly, never got a chance to perform. Later, I heard there was an aspiration to secure Madonna for the night. I really wish that came true. Perhaps next year.
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