In this episode of The Spinoff’s media podcast The Fold, Duncan Greive is joined by Hamish McKenzie, co-founder of Substack.

For years, the media landscape has been filled with publications making money by filling up ad space. While an effective mode of funding for the already underfunded sector, Hamish McKenzie saw an alternative. Alongside co-founders Chris Best and Jairaj Sethi, McKenzie developed Substack, an online platform for writers to send newsletters directly to paying subscribers.

In the three years since its inception, the platform has become host to some of the most well-known names in New Zealand and international journalism, including Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias and local writer David Farrier, and some writers are making a lot of money from subscriptions.

Today on The Fold, McKenzie joins Duncan Greive to talk about a new era of publishing, driven by readers, not ads.

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