Powering down
When I opened Multicast News six months ago, I did so with an explanation that I’ve never been adept at introducing myself or explaining my ideas to others.
Well, I can’t say the same for farewells — and this is one of them. It’s time to close up shop on Substack.
First, some housekeeping: I started contemplating the future of this publication a few months ago. During that time, I wasn’t writing much here, and felt that people might not be getting what they paid for. So, if you’re on a monthly plan, you haven’t been charged in about eight weeks.
If you are on an annual plan, whoops.
But I won’t keep your money: If you paid for a year up front, just reply to this newsletter by email, and I’ll process a prorated refund. Annual subscribers who refuse a refund (or don’t get back to me in a timely manner — I’m not processing refunds in 2032) will receive a separate messages from me in the near future with a courtesy subscription to a new premium product that The Desk is launching in the coming months. More on that soon.
Substack is a great place full of talented writers who publish interesting things every day.
For me, the platform served as a critical lifeline during a terrible emergency in my hometown.
In August 2020, a lightning storm sparked a large wildfire in Napa County. A few days later, the fire crossed over the county line and merged with another blaze that was deliberately started by an arsonist.
The call to firefighters came around 11 p.m. — residents in rural Solano County, along the Napa County line, could see hues of orange that were getting larger and closer.
The late night meant fire helicopters and planes couldn’t observe the blaze from above, and the pandemic meant there were fewer fire crews on duty (and no inmate crews from the nearby state prison, who would normally be on call to assist).
Around 1 a.m., I grabbed my camera equipment and ran out the door. Working for a local newspaper just a few years earlier, I was familiar with the back roads of the county, and that allowed me to get closer to the fire than the sleepy newspaper photographers and TV camera crews, who largely stayed at the police roadblocks.
The calls over the fire scanner grew increasingly desperate as the night went on. Residents stuck in their homes, unable to escape the blaze. Others woken up by the sound of sirens and police officers banging on their doors, warning them to evacuate, with minutes to spare. Most left with nothing more than the clothes on their backs.
A man I met in rural Solano County was worried that the turtles in his pond wouldn’t survive the night. An officer told me to drive carefully, and not go past a certain street — the smoke was so thick, no one would be able to rescue me if I got stuck. On the rural roads — many of which lead to dead ends — there were severed tree branches on fire, everywhere.
I was the first reporter to cover the fire that night. For hours, I kept to the same routine: Drive out to the country, shoot photos and videos, drive back home to post them online and post updates on social media about the fire’s progression, then drive back out to the country for more photos and videos. By morning, news crews from Sacramento and San Francisco were on the front lines, and I went home for some sleep.
When I woke up, hundreds of homes in my town had been destroyed, and two people were reported missing. (They did not make it.)
You can only do so much on social: Back then, character constraints on Twitter and complicated algorithms on Facebook made both unappealing platforms for anything more than short updates and videos. Figuring the community could use a resource for long-form updates and points of reference for things like road closures and shelters, I decided to look for a platform that would enable me to collate information and resources for those affected by the fire.
Substack was it.
The newsletter accomplished its goals early on, and hundreds of subscribers signed up — police chiefs, city council members, TV journalists, radio talent, fire officials and the county sheriff among them. I decided to tap into that momentum and establish a local news brand, Solano NewsNet, as well as a company, Solano Media. I had grand aspirations for a digital news platform that covered a region of Northern California often overlooked by larger news publications in bigger cities. People here crave local news — when they hear sirens and see flashing lights, they want to know what’s up — and they valued a long-time journalist bringing it to them on a platform that reached their phones, tablets and computers as much as their inboxes.
While readers were supportive, the platform left a lot to be desired. There were (and still are) bugs, and very little in the way of support. When Substack announced a new program aimed at helping local digital newsrooms get off the ground, I reached out to see how we could partner on the effort. No one responded. I applied for their mentoring program, figuring a newsletter that gave people critical information during a catastrophic emergency is one they would want to work with. I have no idea if anyone looked at my application, or even if the program got off the ground.
Over the years, Substack has improved — it offers more tools and hooks into more services than it did when I first launched NewsNet in 2020. And it has community features that allow writers to engage with their audience, and with each other.
And Substack has become a haven for journalists and writers who have been fired, laid off or otherwise fallen out of mainstream media’s good graces. Jim Acosta, Terry Moran, Shaun King, Chris Cillizza, Katie Couric, Yashar Ali, Chris Cuomo, Medhi Hasan, Nate Silver, Andy Borowitz, Judd Legum, Dan Rather — they’re all here. Even God, Himself, has a Substack. (And it must be Him, because He’s verified.)
Nearly all of those writers developed their large following through mainstream channels — radio, television, newspapers — and they were smart enough to diversify their presence across different social media platforms — X/Twitter, Bluesky, YouTube, Facebook, Threads. Substack allows them to monetize that following. But they don’t control the platform, and they don’t have a direct relationship with their audience; they work through an intermediary who owns the tools of their trade. They are, in essence, freelance employees of Substack. If the company decides to go in a different direction, or change how it participates in the “creator economy,” some of those journalists are going to have to find a new place to land.
So, what was the point of Multicast News? Just how I described at the beginning — a place where original journalism and analysis on different parts of the media industry could co-exist with my occasional commentary and think-pieces.
The idea was to create a wall of separation between my thoughts and The Desk, the publication I’ve run for over a decade that covers the business of media. News articles there are deliberately written with a focus on the facts and the data, the actions and the outcomes. It would be dishonest to say that my perspective on things doesn’t reveal itself on occasion — but, I try really hard to let the facts speak for themselves, so people can walk away feeling informed, rather than influenced.
I know this might be hard to believe, but people do occasionally ask for my opinion. From time to time, I’ve written moderate-length posts on LinkedIn where I break down why I think something is happening, and where things might be going — and those are generally well-received.
I became convinced that I might have enough energy in me to write a regular column, on a publication that complemented but was otherwise separate from The Desk, and perhaps earn some money from it, too. After launching Multicast News, I quickly realized that Substack was a different place than I’d encountered it years ago — akin to living in an apartment, with noisy celebrity neighbors, who are all vying for attention and dollars and who feel like newcomers are an existential threat to both.
Which is fine. The journalism business is like the rest of the content industry: Very competitive. But that spirit doesn’t generally vibe with my collaborative ethos, and I quickly lost my motivation to continue on with Multicast News.
I still think Substack is a great place for a certain crop of writers and journalists, and I’m glad it exists for them. I hope it continues to exist for a good, long while, and that it evolves into a platform where people feel like they have greater agency over their voice, their audience and their income. Maybe that is through some kind of equity program, or maybe it looks like something else. I don’t know, and no one is paying me to come up with those ideas.
But, I do have ideas. And I’ll be moving forward with many of those on The Desk. If Substack is like living in a noisy apartment building, developing a news website is like having your own home — it’s yours, and you can do with it what you’d like. And every second that I spend investing in a side publication on Substack is time that I can spend building something of my own.
Over the past few months, I’ve carefully looked at how news is presented on The Desk, and saw potential areas of improvement. I learned different elements of design and code to make those changes possible; today, the website has updated “Key Points” and related stories modules; real-time stock quotes in certain stories; dedicated sections on our homepage for special coverage of topics like NextGen TV; and a refreshed archive page with a streamlined user interface. The Desk even launched a groundbreaking Media Earnings portal that collated original stories from the recent third quarter (Q3) financial reporting period.
For what is largely a one-man operation, The Desk looks and feels like something much bigger. It has developed a good reputation of delivering trustworthy information in a way that doesn’t bombard readers with ads or sales pitches; it has developed a strong and loyal audience of media executives, insiders and analysts; and it has earned its place among peer trade and business publications. It plays to win, and it does win; it also plays fair, and it is fair. I’m proud of what The Desk has become, and its projects along the way.
I’m glad I tried to make Multicast News into something. I’m also content with the fact that things didn’t pan out as I would have liked. I gained some valuable insight, including the realization that Substack — at least in this capacity — isn’t for me.
I also heard from people who said they’ve wanted a premium experience from The Desk, and they were happy to pay for Multicast News, because they felt like it would deliver just that. Good to know. In the next few weeks, we’ll be launching on Peaklight, a contextual information platform that charges for access to our news. We earn money from those subscriptions, and it is a great way to directly support our journalism.
In the next few months, we’ll also be launching a premium, subscription-based product on The Desk. It will not be a paywall — articles will still be free to read — but it will offer increased value to the news and analysis published each day, with other perks along the way. I’ll share more details on this soon.
For now, it’s time to say good-bye to you on Substack. I hope you will join me elsewhere.
Best,
Matthew Keys
Publisher, The Desk
Former publisher, Multicast News