One Year of Independence

How Things Work is working.

Image by Jim Cooke.

The publication you are reading, How Things Worked, launched on May 1, 2023. This week marks its one year anniversary. When I began writing here, I told myself that I would give it a good effort for a year, and then assess how it was going. And here we are.

In my first post here, I laid out three reasons why I decided to put my time into this, rather than going for another newsroom job, like I had for my entire career before this. First, because I’ve always liked the ability to write whatever I want, even when that ability was ill-advised. Second, because newsrooms jobs are scarce today due to the fact that tech platform middlemen have sucked most of the money out of the journalism industry. And third, because this sort of publication held out the possibility of becoming the ideal model for any writer: Funded completely by readers, with complete editorial freedom, with no limitations imposed by advertisers or other outside interests.

What is the state of this dream at the one year mark? Pretty good. Pretty good! The dream has not been completely fulfilled. But the progress has been significant enough that I am going to continue doing this. The editorial freedom here is real. The decimation of the traditional journalism’s economic model continues to worsen. And the sustainability of this publication as a business is, I think, on the horizon. With your help.

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Some people go into journalism and write about a specific beat and spend their careers writing about that specific beat. This path can be good for a career, as it allows you to establish yourself as an expert in a well-defined area. But it is poison for the mind. Beats are narrow, and the world is wide. Part of the fun of writing about things is pursuing your own interests. I have written about many different things over the past two decades—media, politics, labor, boxing, economics, fitness, pie, yogurt, and more—and this freedom to pursue my curiosity has instilled in me an enthusiasm for the world as a fascinating place, rather than exiling me to the hell of a reputation as America’s Go-To Reporter on Southeastern Logistics Management Companies, which is a prison of extremely minor prestige that can entrap unwary journalists if they don’t watch out.

I say this as a prelude to noting that the tagline of How Things Work is “Labor, Politics, and Power.” That is a pretty fair summation of most of what I write about here. The past decade or so of my career has been spent mostly as a labor writer, with a lot of politics on the side. A good portion of the posts on this site are primarily about labor issues, and how they fit in the broader world. A lot of the readers of this site come here because they know me as a labor journalist. And yet! Here are the five most popular posts on How Things Work in the past year:

1. Who Is Your Enemy, My Brother? The Real Rich Men North of Richmond.

2. Columnists and Their Lives of Quiet Desperation. On Pamela Paul, and similar.

3. You Have to Grind This Motherfucker Down. The only correct way to interview this guy has never been tried.

4. Young Morality and Old Morality. Wisdom means listening to the angry youth.

5. The Cannibal South. An inferiority complex-ridden region depends on eating its own.

If you’re keeping track, the topics of those columns are, in order: Socialism, media criticism, Trump, Gaza, and the history of the South. What is missing from that list? Labor. Haha. Here we have an example of a dynamic familiar to all labor reporters: Labor is a vital issue, and keeping a focus on labor issues is incredibly important to the national discourse, but it is not an area that naturally attracts an enormous readership. The perpetual challenge is not just to learn about and understand and focus on and write about labor, but to explain it in a way that can draw in casual readers—to show that it is not a niche topic, but one of central importance to all of our lives. One reason why there is not a ton of good mainstream coverage of labor is that, with occasional exceptions, it does not do huge numbers compared with news about Trump or incompetent New York Times columnists.

Nevertheless, How Things Work will be writing about labor to the bitter end! It matters. In that spirit, here are the five most popular labor-centric posts here of the past year:

1. We Don’t Work For You If We Don’t Work For You. On the boundaries of freelance employment.

2. The Real Immigration Problem is Capital, Not Labor. Human immigrants are the same as you. Multinational corporations are not.

3. Housing Is a Labor Issue. Landlords are taking all our wage gains. It doesn’t have to be this way.

4. Killing the Middlemen in the Rideshare Industry. An organizer explains how to make drivers cooperatives a reality.

5. Every Pay Bump Is an Admission of Guilt. Where did your raise come from? It was always there.

There is always the chance that mixing various topics like this will alienate every part of your audience and hinder your ability to build a coherent “brand.” But it’s much more interesting from the perspective of the writer. So I choose to believe that my non-labor writing will draw in unsuspecting readers who will then be stealthily radicalized by the labor writing. Whichever side of this divide you fall on, I hope you just keep reading.

Most Substacks have some form of paywall. This publication does not. My vision for this place is basic socialism: If you read it and you can afford to pay for it, please do. If you read it and you can’t afford to pay for it, you don’t have to. Everyone can read it, and the support of those readers who are able to pay will be enough to sustain it and keep it paywall-free for everyone. This is not the optimal financial arrangement for me, but it is more fair, and I prefer to be read more rather than less.

Currently, How Things Work is roughly in line with the normal Substack figure of about ten percent of subscribers being paid. Let’s have a little conversation here among ourselves about this. I did not start this in order to get rich. My goal from the beginning has been to build it up to a normal salary number, comparable to what I would be getting at a normal newsroom job, and therefore to be able to give it my full attention. After a year, we’re about two-thirds of the way to financial sustainability. Because progress has been steady, I am going to keep doing this, but the faster I can get to full sustainability, the better it will be for this publication’s prospects of survival.

First of all: Thank you to everyone who has become a paid subscriber. Every one of you gives my black heart a burst of sunshine. This direct supportive relationship between readers and writers is a pure and beautiful thing in an industry where such things are rare. You are each the foundation upon which independent media is built.

Around 90 percent of readers here are not paid subscribers. I get it. All of us have grown up in a time during which media had the illusion, at least, of being free—it was supported by ads, and it was ubiquitous, and being asked to pay for it on top of that felt rather crude. Unfortunately, those days are gone. My key message to you about all media in 2024 is, “If you like it, pay for it, or else it will go away.” This is true particularly on Substack, where there is no other, secret revenue stream propping this place up. Many of you may just be casual readers who aren’t here enough to want to pay. That is fine. Others of you may not be able to afford a subscription. That is fine as well. To those of you, though, who read this site (somewhat) frequently, and find it to be (sometimes, in some ways) a valuable part of your media diet, and are not broke, I ask you to consider becoming a paid subscriber. If only ten percent more of readers moved from free to paid subscriptions, this site would be fully sustainable. Once I have reached a reasonable level of financial sustainability, I can just focus on the writing and stop being so annoying about recruiting paid subscribers. Promise. You can also support How Things Work by buying gift subscriptions, sharing the site with your friends to expand its reach, and buying my book. Apart from all of this, for your attention alone, I thank you. That is a valuable thing.

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Some small housekeeping: If you are a paid subscriber, you will receive an email telling you that your subscription will renew after a year has passed. Thank you to all of you who renew. Your continuing support allows me to project the sustainability of this site into the future and make longer term plans. In the near future, I may raise the annual subscription price here slightly to account for inflation. This will not affect existing subscribers—your subscription will be renewed at the price you originally signed up for. Overall, I feel that the “about one cup of coffee per month” subscription price for How Things Work is a pretty fair deal. It is strange to think of media as a form of mutual aid, but it is actually more hopeful than thinking of it as the cynical end product of an industry that really exists to blast unnecessary advertisements into your brain.

I will say one last thing. I’ve worked at publications that had millions of readers, and that was nice, in its own way. But this year of building my own site from scratch has given me new appreciation for every individual reader. You came here of your own free will. There is something heartwarming about that. Collectively, we form a little community here. It’s cool. I will do my best to be worthy of that. The future is what we make it, so we will make it good.

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Also

• I was recently interviewed about labor and politics and my book on the international show “Going Underground,” for some reason. You can watch that segment here if you like.

• My book about the labor movement and its future, “The Hammer,” is available wherever books are sold. A lot of people, not just me, have enjoyed reading it, so you might also. I have been to 15 different cities on book tour, and meeting readers in all of those places has been an incredible experience. I got to sign a lot of books. But if I did not make it to your city and you still want an autographed book, I will mail you one directly if you Paypal me $40. Drop me an email at Hamilton.Nolan@gmail.com if you’re interested in this, and tell me who to inscribe it to. (I will likely do at least a few more book tour stops in more cities as well. If you are interested in bringing me to your city to speak, email me.)

• There are a lot of things to protest in the world today. It’s almost May Day. If you only go to one protest per year, this is the day to do it. Make a plan. See you all out there, my peoples.