Stuck in the middle of the Twitter wars

When Big Tech fights, small business owners like us get screwed.

For the past week, our tiny local newsletter has been caught up in a huge fight between petty billionaire Elon Musk, who owns Twitter, and Substack, where we publish the Arizona Agenda. 

The whole episode has underscored for us the importance of an audience independent of a place like Twitter, which is increasingly a cesspool. 

We chose to launch the Agenda on Substack because they took a chance on us and believed we could build a sustainable local news organization here. Substack awarded us some funding to start the Agenda in 2021 as part of a foray into local news. That round of funding is over, and we’re free to take the Agenda elsewhere at any time. 

We like it here, for the most part — there are tools that help us grow our readership, the backend is easy to use and Substack folks are kind enough to share ideas with us. And we agree with the platform’s mission of empowering writers and journalists to strike out on their own by creating direct relationships with their readers. 

Last week, Musk made several moves to attack Substack after it announced a new part of the platform called Notes, which looks Twitter-esque. We, the independent reporters trying to build a business here, are the casualties of that war. 

Musk censored people’s ability to share Substack links on Twitter. He cut off likes and retweets on posts with Substack links. For a while there, if you clicked on a link to our work through Twitter, a pop-up appeared claiming our website was “unsafe.” He cut off access to the code that allowed Substack writers to embed tweets in their newsletters.

Embedded tweets are a beloved part of our Daily Agendas, adding context or visuals to a story or just giving you a laugh. We’re still figuring out what to do without them. Right now, we’re embedding screenshots, which is a time-consuming workaround. 

While the warning label is now gone from tweets that include links to the Agenda, those tweets are suspiciously receiving far fewer views and less engagement than they used to. Twitter’s decision to limit people’s ability to share our journalism hurts our business. 

We don’t like this war between Twitter and Substack. But it has made us realize the folly of ever relying on a single source of traffic, like a social media platform, for any part of a business.

So why should you care about this tech fight over who can use tweets?

Newsletters like ours need ways to find and grow readership in order to stay alive. Twitter was one big avenue to do that. But, like we said, we don’t want to rely on it. We’d rather rely on our readers, like you. The best way we’ve found to reach new readers is for our existing subscribers to tell their friends about us. 

We don’t need Elon’s help — we need yours. 

Please share our newsletter with anyone you think might be interested. Just click the button below and email it off to some friends or colleagues. Let them know that the Agenda will keep them up to date on state politics in a way that isn’t boring or overly wonky. We’ll make them smarter, we know it!

For you all who read the Agenda regularly, becoming a paid supporter helps us weather the bumps that come along with writing on a new-ish platform. 

Your paid subscription provides our salaries and gives us space to explore other, non-tweet ways to grow the business. 

We could use your subscription dollars to pay for photos or art to go into the Agenda instead. We could use it to run some ads that target potential readers. 

Bottom line: We could really use your paid subscription.

We’re running a 20% off sale right now, too, so you’ll save some money.

And for those of you who already pay, you can always upgrade to a founding membership to throw some more money directly toward local journalism. 

If you’re looking for a non-Twitter alternative to talk with people online, check out Substack’s Notes. We’re hanging out there a little. But you can always forgo social media altogether — you aren’t missing much.

We’re lucky to have a direct line to reach our readers even when the big bad tech companies are fighting. We don’t want to lose it.

Thanks, as always, 

Rachel and Hank