How Substack Writers can Address the
Crisis of Trust in Media
Featuring article and video by Matt Taibbi and Matt Orfalea
1) The Problem:
As "Mainstream Media" loses the trust of
signification portions of the public, writers
are seeking independence, publishing via new platforms like Substack or similar competitors.
Once independent, writers face the challenge of earning the trust of additional subscribers
beyond their core audience and fighting back against establishment
gatekeepers who
question writers' ability to operate independently,
saying, for instance, that writers like Matt Taibbi
pretend that they’re being censored when
in reality they just don’t want editors but they need them
.
2) Solution: live to a higher standard
CiteIt enables writers to distiguish themselves from the competition by looking up and displaying the context of a citation when the writer specifies their source's url.
CiteIt could enable Substack writers
to easily disclose the context
of their html, pdf, audio, and video sources, providing Substack with a feature that
differentiates it from its competitors and can be
integrated across the Substack platform:
- post text
- article voiceovers
- audio
- video, and
- notes
3) How CiteIt Works:
Take a look at an example article — Matt Taibbi’s Nord Stream article ( before and after ) — containing what I call “ naked quotations” — quotations that have no surrounding context.
These type of quotations are regarded with suspicion by non-aligned non-subscribers.
With CiteIt, the writer:
-
links to their sources,
-
CiteIt lookups the context, and
displays it to the reader:
4) Watch Demo: (A Writer’s view)
Documentation: how to use the WordPress plugin
username: public
password: demo22
5) Proposed Next Steps:
- Proof of Concept:
- Add Developer Code to page on Substack domain & Call CiteIt Web service
- Writers Test in Product lab:
- Take Live for Everyone:
- Replace Python webservice
- Start with Writing: Posts & YouTube
- Add Native Audio, Voiceovers
- Add Native Video
- Add PDF Support: digital, then OCR