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 significant 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 pushing back against establishment gatekeepers who question writers' ability to operate independently, saying, for example, that writers like Matt Taibbi pretend that they’re being censored when in reality they just don’t want editors but they need them.

"Naked Quotations" Create Distrust

As an example, take a look at a controversial article Matt Taibbi wrote about the Nord Stream pipeline bombing containing what I call “ naked quotations” — quotations that are not clothed with any surrounding context.

These types of unsubstantiated or opaque quotations are rightly regarded with suspicion by non-aligned readers who have not yet subscribed, but solving this problem could buttress writers' and Substack's reputation and subscriber base. (Video)

2) Solution: live to a higher standard

CiteIt enables writers to distiguish themselves from the competition and push back against establishment critics by looking up and displaying the context of a citation when the writer specifies a 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:

CiteIt could be added to Notes Videos

1. post text
2. post voiceovers
3. audio
4. video, and
5. notes

3) How CiteIt Works:

The writer:

1. links to their quotations's source url.

So The CiteIt webservice is able to:

2. look up the context at the point when an article is published and then

3. display this context to the reader.

4) Watch Demo: (A Writer’s view)

See a demonstration of the CiteIt WordPress plugin with a Ken Klippenstein article:  

Written Instructions

Documentation: how to use the WordPress plugin

  |   Examples Submitted

  username: public
  password: demo22