Welcome to the New Pajiba Political Section on Substack

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | November 7, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | November 7, 2023 |

The first post ever written for Pajiba back in June 2004 was about my disdain for George W. Bush and that corrosive chuckle of his — heh heh heh — and the way that it seems to dismiss people, give them nicknames, and copy off their homework. The site grew from there, as I added in most of my interests: Movies, television, books, and celebrity gossip because I was obsessed with these things, and making them a part of my job ensured that I could indulge in them.

The 2004 election, however, was disillusioning. George W. Bush was a bad President who had lost the popular vote in the 2000 election and gained the presidency by virtue of the Supreme Court, and I assumed that the country would correct its mistake. It did not. I couldn’t imagine writing about a second Bush term, so we pulled our political section with a sigh and a harumph. Over the years, though, it continued to seep back into the site’s coverage, and by 2014, it was as integral to Pajiba as the television coverage.

Today, we’re spinning our political section off to Substack. Before explaining, let me preface this by saying that we have no plans to change anything else on Pajiba or to put the Substack behind a paywall.

There are a few reasons for this change. One reason is ad rates. Our advertising is programmatic, which means that various advertisers digitally bid on placement through our ad network, and there are certain words that advertisers like to avoid and/or pay less to advertise against. One of those words is “Trump.” Also, “guns,” “abortion,” and “terrorist cell.” For some reason, Bounty paper towel ads do not like to run against those words, and removing those terms from our site will increase ad rates overall.

The second reason is that we must place an egg or two in a different basket. Is Substack the future? Maybe. Maybe not. But it’s important to have a presence in other spaces and to be prepared. We have already had to weather Google algorithm changes, Facebook pivots to video and/or away from the news, and the viability of Twitter as a social media platform, so we want to be prepared for the next inevitable change.

Finally, there is a financial component. The digital publishing industry has seen better days, and much of the available advertising dollars go to Google and Zuckerberg. We also expect a lot of uncertainty in digital advertising in 2024 because of changes that Google will make that are great for privacy reasons but not so great for online advertising.

We’re trying to prepare for that. Again, access to our Politics Substack will remain free (and ad-free!). We will not put any regular political posts behind a paywall. But, as you may have seen with our friends over on Laineygossip, GoFugYourself, and Wonkette (all sites that launched within a year of us), there will be an option to subscribe for a few dollars a month or several more dollars for a year. There will be no obligation to subscribe.

Over the years, a number of people have asked us if there were ways that could contribute to the financial stability of the site. This is a way for our most loyal and engaged readers to do so.

What will you get if you subscribe? Mostly, our appreciation. But also our adoration! We may also provide subscribers the occasional article with behind-the-scenes info about running a nearly 20-year-old website because I like to write those inside baseball posts that casual readers do not give a damn about. There may be other opportunities to engage, too.

To reiterate: The rest of Pajiba will be the same. Access to the political section is free and conveniently linked with the latest posts from the Pajiba home page. We hope you’ll continue reading our political coverage, especially as we approach the most important election of our lifetimes. We also hope that the same commenter community that makes our political posts what they are will continue to follow us over here. As always, thank you for reading!