From Substack And Beyond, The Supermarket of Content Has Never Been Bigger, If You Shop Wisely…

One of the great joys of showing up remains the randomness of not just meeting new people and hearing their experiences, but in reconnecting with older ones. Case in point, at the MIT Sloan Sports Conference Columbia hosted our annual cocktail event for students, alums and friends in the industry. Across the bar I saw an old colleague, who graduated from our program in 2012 or 2013 who lived in Boston. His name is Cam Smith, and I knew Cam not only from his time with us at school but from his work in various places on the media/reporting side.

Turns out Cam is now helping run sports partnerships for Substack, where we host our podcast and where I now host my newsletter. While the timing was fortuitous on both, it also led to a bigger discussion on media and best practices in one of the “north of 500” episodes of our podcast we recently did with him, which you can listen to here.

A topic that my colleague Tom Richardson asked both Cam and I was with regard to the ability to storytell on platforms today. Is the opportunity broader or narrower than in the past?

What popped into my head for some reason was a supermarket and how what we see in a supermarket is not that dissimilar from the media landscape today.

There are literally aisles of content…end caps, something pricey and niche, some generic and easily attainable. Many share ingredients but are framed differently. We just have to make a list and figure out where we want to shop and when we get ready to check out, has our purchase…food, specialty items, content, information…been worthwhile.

Platforms like Substack, The Athletic and others, have opened us up to deep dives in content that we choose to consume, or that is served to us. We may want just  small taste of the NBA or a really deep dive into basketball analytics or the Portland Trailblazers; we can find them all. If we have a hankering for women’s sports or soccer, be it World Cup or a USL club, we can go shopping and see what we find. College sports?  Same thing. The shelves of our content supermarket have never been fuller.

Now, like when we shop, we have to read the labels. Do we trust these people? Are they AI or content farms or click bait? If something resides behind a paywall, is it worth the cost? If I want high end coffee beans I pay and enjoy. If I am satisfied with Folgers, that works. It’s my choice.

The aisles also contain all the social content. So, I want to skip those aisles entirely or are they on my shopping list from time to time. Also let’s not forget word of mouth. Some we trust tells us they like a brand, maybe we try it. Same with content sources, from short form video to podcasts. Yes, we have to go according to our tastes, our niche, our interest, our trust and our time, but the content supermarket is there for the offering.   

Now maybe its too simplistic, and why still opine for the days of old. But the reality is the choices in our content supermarket have never been broader, and Substack has become one of the visits that keeps growing and refining our shopping experiences.

We just have to make the list, think about what we want delivered to our basket, and enjoy the taste.

Thanks Cam for the discussion, and to Tom for posing the question.