How to Save the Media
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Pub Date Nov 17 2026 | Archive Date Not set
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Description
Trust in journalism is collapsing. Social platforms reward outrage over truth. Algorithms, advertisers, and billionaires shape what we see, think, and share. Now artificial intelligence is unleashing a flood of cheap content, raising an urgent question: what kind of media can still earn public confidence?
In How to Save the Media, journalist and Substack cofounder Hamish McKenzie traces, from inside the industry’s transformation, how journalism reached this breaking point—and what the current moment reveals about what comes next.
Blending cultural history, political economy, reportage, and first-person insight, McKenzie explores the collapse of the advertising-driven media model and the emergence of new ways of organizing journalism around direct relationships between writers and readers. Through vivid stories of legendary journalists, independent writers, local reporters, and new media pioneers, he shows how power is shifting away from institutions and platforms—and back toward individuals and communities who can own their work, their audiences, and their values.
This is not a tactical “creator playbook.” It is a big-idea book about journalism, democracy, and civic life in the age of AI. McKenzie argues that media is not just content, but civic infrastructure: the system societies rely on to think together, argue productively, and decide what is credible. Rebuilding it requires rethinking incentives, ownership, and responsibility in a media environment shaped by automation and scale.
Clear-eyed but ultimately hopeful, How to Save the Media argues that today’s chaos is not the end of serious journalism, but a turbulent transition—one in which the choices made by journalists, institutions, and readers alike will shape what comes next.
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9798893312034 |
| PRICE | $26.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 192 |
Available on NetGalley
Average rating from 2 members
Featured Reviews
Ann D, Reviewer
Fantastic book. It was hard to put down. I was expecting a dry marketing book but got a rich. visual, wonderfully written story and framework from someone who's in the thick of it and has a lot to say. Surprising, fascinating, and fun to read.
tej d, Reviewer
This book was of particular interest to me because I publish on the Substack platform and am fascinated by the community, its culture, vibes, and audience tools. Thank you, Netgalley, for sharing the ARC.
The book is a welcome first-person account from the author with a near-perfect vantage point of telling the antecedents, the origin story, the process of building, critical decision points, and ultimately the story of writers who complemented the founders' vision for this new media and platform. Though others had tried (Medium) and competitors exist (Patreon), Substack has a feel and community that's uniquely its own.
I don't believe the book is true to its title as it does not provide a blueprint to "Save the Media". However, the history of how and why the platform was built, the ethos of writer-owned publications, subscription drivers, freedom of speech, content moderation etc. are all individual decisions that collectively made Substack. I think the book could almost be called a version of "the butterfly effect" of a new medium.
The book does a great job of presenting history, politics, subject, and philosophy in bite-sized chapters. Though storytelling enters 'dad mode' occasionally, moving from journalism of telling the 'what happened' to opinion telling us 'why it happened', it stops short of advice and never really tells 'what to do' to actually earn the book's title 'how to save...".
It is a must-read for any Substack author to better understand the platform that provides their publications a home. It is also instructive in telling the story of how it has shaped positive discourse in a sea of negative and doomscrolling social media.