#18: the past and future of columns
Time Spent is a series of letters exploring how and why we should we read the news, among other ways to spend time. I’m also working on a book about this. You can subscribe here if you’re new. And get in touch with me here or by replying :)
Good morning,
I’ve been thinking a lot about columns, be they commentary or advice, and the difference between writing to a specific person (or group of people) and the wider world. In fact, I wrote the first draft of this letter to my friend in her inbox, because it’s so much easier to think to a tiny audience.
Anyway, yesterday, I was listening to an episode of the Longform Podcast (from July 2019) with artist Jenny Odell as I cooked breakfast, and what stopped me was an advertisement I heard for one of the show's sponsors, Substack, the now wildly-popular newsletter platform that everyone uses, including me.
They were featuring Heather Havrilesky's Substack, called Ask Molly, an advice column written by the shorter-tempered twin of Ask Polly, which Havrilesky also writes, but for New York Magazine.
It was a perfect example of the question I've been living with for the past week, which is what is the future of the column? I know that's a broad genre, so let's start with advice columns.
Where (advice) columns came from
According to WGBH, the earliest advice columns such as those published in the Athenian Mercury in the 1690's existed for practical purposes (though the types of questions submitted by readers ranged from inquiries on decorum to philosophy). Limitations of literacy and access to information made papers one the few places a person could go for information or advice. Questions were answered anonymously and answers were sourced through highly educated braintrusts like the Athenian Society. Of course, eventually literacy and education rates rose and people didn't want advice from the elite anymore. They wanted to hear from regular people they knew.
Thus the eventual rise of columnists of a regular sort—perhaps best exemplified by Dorothy Dix in the New Orleans Daily Picayune, whose column is one of the earliest examples of what a typical advice column in a publication looks like today.
Interestingly, while trust in today's news organizations is decreasing, the popularity of advice columns is not. People want good information, a familiar relationship and a way to decide on (or check) their values. This is unlikely to ever change.
On Substack, and such
Enter platforms like Substack. (Here's CJR's special report on it for those who want an overview.) The relevant points are that it was established in 2017 and grew popular quickly, in part because journalism jobs are hard to find these days, and also, anyone can be a journalist these days or at least take their writerly dreams off the dusty shelf.
On Substack, you can write a free or paid newsletter, and the top paid writers are already earning six-figures, which is unheard of for journalists. Plus you can write about whatever you want, so you can build your own niche without the blessing of an editor. Gone are the days of aspiring to be a columnist at the paper.
Granted, the vast majority of writers are not writing on Substack full-time and not making six figures, but it's a promising leap forward, if only because it's an incredibly easy way to collect the highest value metric for anyone trying to build an audience on the internet today: your readers' email addresses.
That said, I just finished the On Deck Writers Fellowship, which was fascinating, because it's the closest thing I've seen to an education pipeline for people who want to write Substacks (literally, or as a genre). Of course that's a gross generalization, but a lot of people in the program write newsletters, and a lot of people are writing what I would call columns, sometimes advice, sometimes commentary, sometimes curation and occasionally journalism or creative nonfiction.
Which brings us back to today's question. What is the future of “the column”?
Two Ways to Build an Audience
The most interesting talk of the program, for me, was one given by Justin Murphy on growing an audience as an indie thinker. For context, he's an academic that basically made the internet his full-time home. And his advice to people trying to build an audience online included the following points (these are just rough notes with my own commentary added):
There are two pathways to prestige: dominance (you are rich, strong or command respect, even if you fake it through such things as wearing a suit), or admiration for non-power based reasons. Fear vs. Love, basically.
In the golden age of broadcasting (radio, newspapers, TV), you had to maximize prestige in order to have enough influence to get time on the airwaves (because they were limited, so lots of men in suits made it on TV).
As media choice increased (from the second half of the 20th century to today), an important tradeoff surfaced: prestige vs. honesty.
Basically, once everyone can talk in the public sphere (because it became so cheap and then free), how do you stand out? Honesty.
If you are honest (so honest that you are willing to be punished for it by people disagreeing with you, ridiculing you, etc), you actually build more trust with the right people — your loyal audience of like-minded (or like-valued) people.
The bad side of this is that we are seeing so many people become celebrities by wagering unpopular truths.
The good is that if you're true enough to yourself to the point that some people think you're lame, people will organize around you because they trust you’re in it for the right reasons, ie: you can rise to the top of a subculture. And there are good ones out there, too.
Here's what I took away from the talk: Basically, human beings didn't evolve to communicate to SUCH a large public as the whole internet. Our machinery and our egos are designed to help us live in tribes, which we don't anymore, thanks to the internet. So being "yourself" (like your actual boring self) online is really hard. It's easier to seek traditional prestige or the quick rewards of being contrarian, because... feedback.
I like this framing because it checks out against something else I've been noticing.
If everyone is becoming a columnist, how do we pick the best columns?
Nieman Storyboard (a publication of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard) recently published an interview with Mary Schmich, longtime columnist for the Chicago Tribune, and this is how they described her:
In today’s deeply divided world – where relationships have unraveled over everything from politics to public health – Mary Schmich is a rare commodity: A columnist who can tackle the most contentious topic and still manage to make us think it’s all going to be all right. That restrained, even-handed approach is just one reason why Chicago Tribune readers have loyally turned to Schmich’s column for almost 30 years. She’s like the houseguest who never wears out her welcome.
Where do we find more Mary Schmich’s?
I’m currently reading her collected columns in Even the Terrible Things Seem Beautiful To Me Now (definitely recommend it) and it’s noticeable how her power comes from honesty and not prestige. She writes about her family, a lot. She writes about her tribe (Chicago). Which makes you feel like you’re reading about your own family, your own tribe. You are making sense of the world you live in together… together.
As a reader, I’ve definitely identified my “tribes” online and with some effort, I believe anyone can find the people who speak to them. But it’s not the same as effortlessly being guided by a wise, even-tempered, local friend.
That’s what I’m afraid has been lost.
(A different take on this is that Substack has become milquetoast.)
One place I went looking to assuage my fear is the terminology used by the Pulitzer Prize committee for "best commentary" (aka columns) each year. They always publish a short sentence about why someone won.
My extremely unscientific analysis points to a narrowing of the the awards given, in response to the world widening. For example, the initial several decades all use language rewarding general wisdom and insight on the times. Then they become more and more specific. The last 5 prizes were given for topical, reported commentary that exposed truth in a new way (most recently, Nikole Hannah-Jones won it for “a sweeping, deeply reported and personal essay for the ground-breaking 1619 Project, which seeks to place the enslavement of Africans at the center of America’s story, prompting public conversation about the nation’s founding and evolution.")
Which makes me think that the only place honesty has any value anymore is in the center of the internet cacophony. Take the thing that everyone takes for granted and tell us the truth. The whole country should be your audience. This, of course, takes tremendous grit and skill to do, and it’s important.
But for my regular old local column, the one that could tell me how to live and what to think: I wonder if perhaps the noise of today is as deafening as the silence that gave birth to our earliest columns and for that reason, we need to invent them all over again.
In other news
As my paralysis over this information echo-chamber has only just started relenting, I’ve decided to take the baby step of microblogging daily on Instagram through the month of December to discover where my own truths lie. I know it’s not how you’re supposed to use Instagram but I’m having fun so far. Follow along if you wish and at the end of the month, I’ll tell you what I’ve discovered.
Warmly,
Jihii
P.S. If you enjoyed this, consider sharing with a friend :)