Two of my former colleagues from HuffPost who also took buyouts last month launched a new Substack-based news outlet called Public Domain, all focused on public lands reporting. It's seriously excellent and, if this is an area of interest for you, I absolutely recommend subscribing. 

Here are a few good examples of their work: 
https://www.publicdomain.media/p/wildlife-colorado-trapping

https://www.publicdomain.media/p/trump-blm-nominee-kathleen-sgamma-federal-landere-is

https://www.publicdomain.media/p/montana-leaders-flirt-public-land-transfer-movement

Substack seems like the last bastion against internet enshittification

X meanwhile has the holy trinity of enshittifiers:
1. Fast thoughts — slop
2. Fast feelings — political outrage
3. Fast money — shitcoins

What allows SS to grow without leaning into any of these? Or maybe they do and I’m just not aware

I would recommend Beehiiv over Substack; we've looked around a lot for a newsletter platform and it's much better in terms of backend admin and just as easy to run in terms of content.

Business model is slightly different though. Beehiiv has flat pricing (https://shorturl.at/lDY5h) whereas Substack takes a cut when you're selling paid subscriptions. Not an issue at first but it gets expensive when you grow which means Substack has an interest to promote big newsletters.

Other than that, the idea is the same. You give creators the opportunity to do what they want which is usually something longer and more considered than fast engagement on X etc. With the amount of AI-generated content growing, I think good newsletters can be a great niche (obviously depending on the topic).