Do Black journalists get less paying subscribers than white journalists?

Last month, Frederick Joseph took to Substack’s social feed to point out the revenue gap between Black writers and white writers on the platform.

Do yourself a favor and don’t read the replies.

Joseph is a bestselling author and one of Substack’s most popular newsletter publishers. He hasn’t yet published this essay, but it got me thinking about why this gap is happening and what we could do about it.

I don’t need more proof that racism exists in [*insert any scenario here*]. We already have tons of detailed evidence about how big racial pay gaps are for full time employment, published authors and creators monetizing with brand deals.

What struck me about what Joseph said here was that it could be the READERS of Black writers who were not paying them at the same rate of white writers. Their OWN AUDIENCE.

What’s a writer to do about that?

That’s what I want to find out.

I’m running a Reader Revenue Race Gap survey to dig up some more specific reasons than white supremacy (a valid reason, of course, but not that actionable for one person just trying to make a living) and to surface some possible solutions here that individual writers could implement when it comes to growing their own paying subscriber base.

Anyone can take the survey. I’m especially interested in hearing from Black journalists and writers and anyone who has an inkling that their race might be affecting their revenue.

This is not a quantitative survey. I’m not going to do a statistical summary. I plan to pull from the experiences you share and offer back some potential experiments you could try with your own audience to close this gap for reader-backed revenue. The point here is action, not analysis.

I don’t mean to minimize the significant forces of systemic racism or imply that we’re going to solve that here, but I do think, on an individual level, we can raise the wage for reader-backed journalists of color. Not just for the next generation or for some distant future, but for you to fund and continue your work right now.

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