Third Rail is coming soon
A new Substack magazine by a co-founder of The Bellows launches in August
For the last month, I've been tinkering in the 'ol journalism workshop with friends and colleagues.
Now I’m pleased to announce that I’m joining the ever-growing Substack world and launching a new publication called Third Rail that’s launching in early August.
What’s Third Rail? Much of the content will likely be similar to the kinds of pieces I wrote or edited for The Bellows, but I’m also open to content that goes beyond populist politics: interviews, smart personal essays, and humor (this YouTube video is one of the most effective critiques of wokeness ever).
Joining me as a staff writer for Third Rail is Ben Burgis, a philosophy professor, columnist at Jacobin Magazine, and the author of Give Them An Argument: Logic for the Left. For our launch, we’ll also have a piece from Cedrick Michael Simmons, who wrote a great piece I edited for The Bellows about White Fragility. We will also have a piece by Cassidy Block, a writer who has been Counterpunch and Jacobin.
Why Substack? There’s a growing number of journalists and writers flocking to Substack recently because of the low overhead and the fact that we can create our own sustainable subscription model. I’m inspired by projects like The Discourse, a blog founded by former staffers of Splinter that uses multiple writers and editors under one roof.
Like The Discourse, Third Rail will look like a more traditional online media publication in that it has several staff writers (and eventually podcasters) while also taking freelance writing from other contributors. The goal is to provide content for free until we are able to build up a base of readers and then implement some kind of paywall system to be determined.
Now what? In the meantime, let me know if you’d like to be involved. Here are some options:
Pitch me a story to be published on Third Rail’s substack.
Partner with us. If you’re an individual writer who either has a substack already or is considering starting one, we can talk about adding you to our roster if we both think your content would be a good fit. If we pool our resources and make great content together, I believe that we’d collectively get more paying subscribers.
As someone who has been under some the thumb of corporate media for the past 20 years, I’m really excited about getting a fresh start with a worker-owned enterprise.
-Ryan