Part 2 of 3 part mini-series on Supporting Independent Media as part of the People’s Playbook
In the previous article, I detailed out six principles I use to vet out sources for helping to make sense of the news. In this and the next part of the series, I’ll share my main intel sources for independent media.
In this part, I’ll talk about where we are now, Substack, as a platform. Why I like it and have chosen to use it and the people on here that I follow. In the next part I’ll detail other people using various other platforms.
Here is why I’m using Substack. It is super simple to use. It takes over the details of collecting email optins and emailing out completely. While these are not difficult to do otherwise, Substack has made them seamless and automatic.
Substack also allows for both free and paid subscriptions. I have chosen at this time to make everything available for free for my writings here. Various other people give:
- Paid subscriber only posts
- Early access to posts
- Increased interaction
- Signed copies of books
Others use it completely as a donation only platform without any tangible benefit.
They’re rolling out new features such as podcasting via this platform too.
What we’ve seen is that people with a sizeable following, often earned from truth-telling, can make a decent or even great income from Substack. Of course, building a following from scratch is easier said than done.
Many investigative journalists that previously worked for mainstream media outlets instead find their home here.
Instead of some corporation or singular big benefactor being responsible for their paycheck, and thus influencing what can be said, the is a means of a bottoms-up decentralized funding source. That is a theme we’ll be returning to again and again.
And where income streams were demonetized or outright banned in other places, this can be a great place to grow it.
You can do your part in supporting the journalists you wish to see thrive. The point of the independent media is that the funding is independent too.
There does need to be a watchful eye towards audience capture, but this is of much less threat (at least right now) compared to corporate and government capture. Anyone who doesn’t seen that is pointing at pennies, while ignoring $100 bills.
Substack Channels I Follow
Here are the channels that I am currently following at the time of writing.
Hopkins is a playwright in Germany that provides an often needed humorous take on the “Rise of the New Normal” and the “Covidian Cult”. I wish I could write with the same wit and satire he does.
A former teacher in New York about propaganda, Miller fairly recently got fired for his views. Gives great insight into how propaganda works from someone that has studied it for decades. One of the things he does is keep an ever-growing list of accounts of those that “died suddenly” the world over. This includes some very disturbing videos. (Unknown causes are the leading cause of death in Alberta, Canada.)
Kirsch is bombastic, but very passionate. Has put his money where his mouth is, and he has millions that he is wielding in an attempt to get the truth out. Details the facts surrounding vaccination quite in depth from someone that got vaccinated himself.
Lawrie formerly worked for the WHO. She led the meta-analysis that showed, without a doubt that Ivermectin worked against COVID. She even recorded her colleague Andrew Hill talking about how he was pressured from the outside to arrive at the opposite conclusion.
Rappoport is more out-there than most here. He doesn’t believe in viruses. But again, I follow people that I don’t agree with completely. He often also provides imaginative and humorous takes on things.
Berenson is a New York Times report that got squeezed out because of actually following the data on the vaccines. Got censored off Twitter, but is winning a case against them, and actually got reinstated, proving collusion between the White House and Twitter.
Greenwald was made famous from the Edward Snowden NSA leaks. Got squeezed out of a news organization he helped create, The Intercept. Now on Substack.
Taibbi is another mainstream journalist now independent. Does some very valuable deep dives with a humorous take, pointing out the hypocrisy involved often.
Eisenstein often talks about the mythology behind our the movement of the masses. Definitely a viewpoint that stands out from the rest.
Siri is the main lawyer that the Informed Consent Action Network works with. He battles and wins cases against the pharmaceutical fraud machine with a focus on vaccines.
Some of these people are what I like to call “mainstream-adjacent,” such as Taibbi, Greenwald and Berenson. They only recently got squeeze out of the mainstream. While they cover certain topics well, they still follow the propaganda on such things as 9-11. Or thinking that only this vaccine is problematic but the vaccine program as a whole hasn’t been. In short, they only diverged from the masses recently.
Others are off the deep-end, and I say that with respect as I’m off the deep end myself. Again, parallax through multiple angles.
This is a living list. Some people I read everything from. Others I just glance at a few pieces here and there. Some I’ll stop following at some point. Others will be added.
And this is just around “news” topics. There are, of course, writers covering every sort of subject here on Substack.
Most of them I follow as free subscribers. A handful I lend a few bucks in support.
The Potential Downside
I’d be remiss if I didn’t cover this subject without this warning. Substack is a centralized website. They’ve made clear their stance on free speech and stood strongly for it, at least thus far. Here’s an excerpt from their article, Society Has a Trust Problem.
We will continue to take a strong stance in defense of free speech because we believe the alternatives are so much worse. We believe that when you use censorship to silence certain voices or push them to another place, you don’t make the misinformation problem disappear but you do make the mistrust problem worse.
Trust is built over time. It can be rebuilt over time, as long as those in positions of responsibility don’t succumb to pressure to take shortcuts. Trust can’t be won with a press release or a social media ban; and it can’t be strengthened by turning away from hard conversations. It comes from building and respecting relationships. For the media ecosystem, it requires building from a new foundation.
That is the work we commit ourselves to at Substack. It is hard, and it is messy. It is the only way forward.
Will this continue to be the case always? I sincerely hope so.
But even if they do stand their ground, that would only mean that they’ll come under attack in other forms. They will be smeared and censored.
While I’m going to be using Substack for the time being, as a backup all articles will also be hosted on here on LoganChristopher.com, a platform I control.
Your turn. Who do you like on Substack?