I launched my original blog on WordPress back in September 2009, shortly after I graduated law school. At the time, I was also very active on the nascent Twitter to promote my posts. Over the past seventeen years, the landscape has changed quite a bit. Podcasts have surged in popularity. Advisory Opinions, Strict Scrutiny, and others command massive audiences, and their hosts write best-selling books. Social media has shifted from long-ish threads to bite-sized POV videos. And Substack has emerged as a popular platform that authors can monetize.
The Volokh Conspiracy has moved from place-to-place, but has remained largely the same: posts by a host of authors are sorted chronologically. Indeed, I think it is a testament to Eugene's vision that this platform has endured for more than a quarter century. True enough, some bloggers have come and gone. I joined in late 2019. Others have left the site to publish on their own platforms. Still, the Volokh Conspiracy has had remarkable stability in this field.
Many readers frequently ask if I would set up a Substack. My usual response is that all of my posts are freely available on the Volokh Conspiracy. They reply that Substack makes it easier to read content in newsletter form, delivered right to their inboxes. That point is fair enough, but there is some extra amount of work that goes into preparing newsletters. As regular readers know, my posts are usually a form of stream of consciousness that could benefit from more proof-reading. I can justify this approach because, as I often say, readers get what they paid for. To be sure, Reason.com does provide some advertising revenue, which is split among the bloggers, but the amount is not sufficient to align incentives.
