The Ankler’s recent departure from Substack is reverberating beyond just the Hollywood newsletter’s platform switch, exposing broader tension among media brands who are also quietly considering an exit from the digital publisher that launched them, Oliver Darcy reports Monday in his Status newsletter.
The Ankler is migrating to Passport, a platform developed by tech journalist Ben Thompson, a move that The Ankler chief executive Janice Min characterized as less as a rejection of Substack and more as a natural evolution.
“Substack is an incredible launchpad, but we reached a point where it wasn’t built for what we were becoming,” Min told Status. “As we grew into a broader media business, we needed more flexibility and control across products, revenue, and audience relationships than the platform allows.”
That same sentiment appears to be spreading among some of Substack’s top revenue drivers, with several major publishers privately expressing frustration and seeking alternatives of their own, Darcy writes, citing several people familiar with the matter. They include the Bulwark, Zeteo and Feed Me, outlets that represent a significant share of Substack’s top-performing business and politics verticals.
Substack’s standard 10% cut of subscription revenue has long rankled larger publishers, particularly those generating millions annually. As Darcy notes, that fee can translate to “hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not north of a million each year” for top-tier outlets.
Compounding the issue is product limitation: While Substack has invested in features like its Notes social feed and discovery engine, publishers have voiced frustration over customization constraints and a uniform design ecosystem that can make brands feel like “sub-brands within its own ecosystem.”
One unnamed publisher summarized the tension: “The reality is that Substack was built for the one man band … you just start to hit against some of the limitations of their platform.”
Competition has intensified, meanwhile. Platforms such as beehiiv (which hosts Status), Ghost and Patreon are aggressively courting creators with lower fees and greater flexibility. Beehiiv, in particular, has positioned its zero-cut model as a direct challenge to Substack’s economics, escalating into a public spat between Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie and beehiiv CEO Tyler Denk.
Substack argues that its ecosystem — including discovery tools and global payments infrastructure — offsets its fees. An unnamed Substack spokesperson told Status that the platform “drives roughly 30% of new paid subscriptions,” emphasizing the value of network effects. A Substack press contact did not immediately respond Monday night to a request for additional comment.
For mature media brands, particularly those with established audiences and ambitions beyond newsletters, that value proposition may be diminishing, Darcy reports, citing a “growing sense … that some publishers may have already extracted most of the value they can” from Substack’s recommendation engine.
For Hollywood-facing outlets like The Ankler, the calculus is especially acute, as these brands inevitably expand into multi-platform businesses like events, podcasts and premium content, making the need for ownership over design, data and revenue streams more critical.
