Content Is Not King

According to a recent report by Jessica Testa of The New York Times, “European publishers collectively earn more than $90 million annually on Substack. Some of the target markets in Europe France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and Austria, where the company’s founders — CEO Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie, and Jairaj Sethi — have assembled “a flock of new leaders to oversee operations,” according to Testa.

As we get closer to the fourth anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the conversation around the role of NATO has grown. It’s not just about defense capabilities and investments by NATO members, but also about how both Ukraine and the Alliance have leveraged — and are continuing to leverage — innovation.

We started to work on this list in February this year. Since then, the list of politicians and politicos on Substack has grown and is continuing to grow. Our list below is updated to November 10, 2025. Go to our updated list here 2028 presidential contenders like Gavin Newsom, Pete Buttigieg, have joined Substack. House Speaker Mike Johnson and former Speakers Nancy Pelosi, John Boehner, Newt Gingrich are also on the platforms, as are 34 US Senators, over 30 members of Congress, and 5 Governors.

For this week’s Substack we interviewed Meg Coffey, founder of State of Social, Australia’s largest digital marketing and social media conference. Why did we go Down Under for this interview? Three reasons… First, State of Social has amazing speakers! We really learned about the event last year over drinks in chatting with our friend , author of and digital marketing and creator economy expert. Lia was about to head to Perth, Australia for the State of Social 2024.

Two major announcements in artificial intelligence and generative AI this past week attracted the attention of many fellow Substackers — interesting discussions and conversations about OpenAI and MetaAI’s new releases have convinced us to changed our plans for our newsletter this week and pivot a bit. So this week’s focus will be not only about the two announcements, but also how the Substack’s community reacted to them.

The winner is not Trump, but India’s Narendra Modi Why does everybody love Modi, including Trump? What’s Trump’s approval rating at home? Who’s the best political leader on Substack? Who are the top leaders at the UN and other global organizations? According to the most recent Global Leader Approval Rating Tracker by Morning Consult, the world leader with the highest approval rating in Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India.

How are creators embracing diplomacy? Our chat with Aaron Parnas Creators’ diplomacy Does diplomacy run on Substack? Our interview with Catherine Valentine at Substack What’s the state of digital diplomacy? An analysis by Katie Harbath Is Substack the new town square for digital diplomacy?

Why are we starting from Hillary Clinton? What about Barack Obama? Why did Joe Biden invest heavily on creators? What happened back during the 2020 presidential campaign? Donald Trump v Kamala Harris
 What role did Barron Trump play? Why is Trump’s strategy winning? Is Gavin Newsom’s anti-Trump strategy working? Next week, we will delve deeper into the role of Substack in digital politics and diplomacy, thanks to a series of interviews with , , , and more.

Why a new logo for Cracker Barrel? What went wrong? Was it just about the logo? What do Airbnb and Apple have to do with Cracker Barrel? First of all, happy Labor Day! Cracker Barrel officially opened its first store on September 19, 1969 in Lebanon, Tennessee, by local entrepreneur Dan Evins. According to Logopedia, the original logo of Cracker Barrel did not contain any image until 1977.

If we’re just looking at the numbers, yes. California Governor Gavin Newsom trolling US President Donald Trump seems to be working. Newsom is up 450% in followers on X — formerly Twitter — since June and the number of people searching for him in Google is up to 1300%. “I think it absolutely has been working in terms of generating attention, which is what he’s trying to do, right?,” CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten said.