Moving from Substack to Ghost.io may have been premature, yet here we all are swimming for press freedom.
In September of 2025 I did a deep dive on posts like this one by Paul Schatzkin learning about Substack’s ownership group. They included data about how Substack paid out approximately $25 million to about 10 writers, and everyone else — about 17,000 creators according to the piece referenced above, splits the rest. The author noted that washed out to about $235 per year per writer. These pieces also noted how Substack is a private company which includes its original founders as owners, but is also underwritten by large angel investors like Andreesen Horowitz, Y Combinator, and similar smaller firms.
Well I know a little bit about angel investment firms and how they operate, having had been part of a couple angel-invested companies in the late 90s and early 00s. I lost a significant chunk of money to their role in tanking the 1999-2000 dot-com bubble (i.e. the dot-com crash), and generally I do not trust them. Further, I know more than a little bit about Marc Andreesen, a fellow Iowan-Wisconsinite transplant, and how he operates. I’ve always respected him, his technical work at Mosaic, Opsware, Ning, and his investment firm’s savvy as super angels. When he became a financial backer to Donald Trump’s campaign, and then a presidential advisor in 2024, however, that was a turning point for me.
It really fucking pissed me off.
Ever the idealist progressive activist despite my status as persona-non-grata to the left wing political establishment, over the years I’ve tried to practice my values with my money. I try to spend local with my community neighbors if I can, and if I can’t do that, I spend with ethical companies. I try to buy books, magazines, newspapers, and technical manuals from local shops (shout out Magers & Quinn). I buy hard copy music from Electric Fetus and Down In The Valley. I buy hardware at the locally-owned ACE Hardware, but sometimes have to begrudgingly go to Menards or Fleet Farm. I buy groceries at Aldi and Cub, but I also intentionally shop at East Side Food Co-Op (former employee). I have a Costco membership. I have only walked into a Target once since the boycott over diversity policies erupted in February of 2025, and only go to Wal-Mart in a literal consumer emergency. All of that is to emphasize that I try to shop places where worker’s rights, pay, and benefits are protected and enhanced.
Giving Marc Andreesen any connection to my intellectual property and blood-sweat-and-tears given when I write, seemed really bad to me. It just made my stomach crawl. No way in hell was I going to prop up a guy who is a literal financial contributor and advisor to the most corrupt grifter fascist-cum-dictator America has ever seen.
So, one Saturday morning I was pissed off enough about it that I got busy and moved all of my content to Ghost.io which is still owned and operated by the Ghost Foundation 501(c)(3) non-profit. I remember I started after the second cup of Cafe Bustelo espresso hit me at 10:00AM, and I got done about 10:00PM. My therapist later asked me if I had been manic. He may have been on to something.
But I did move the content, with the idea that I felt the need to open the aperture of opportunity a bit, to expand the idea to a not-for-profit newsroom. I didn't really know what I meant by that, but creating IYKYKNews.com out of this big transition, at least in my mind meant eventually I would pass-off running the operation to an editorial team to manage editorial operations and strategy. I would just post my writing there. Earlier this year I revised the idea with the CAPSULE - IYKYK Newsroom Project. As the name implies, IYKYK Newsroom is envisioned to be something bigger than just a spot to drop my musings, political rants, and occasionally spiritually-oriented writing. It is intended to be the independent progressive journalism answer to sites like Meidas Touch or The Bullwark, but with 24x7 live hard news coverage, investigative journalism, hard hitting analysis, and global reach.
Suffice it to say part of developing any brand is establishing a brand identity for itself, and planting flags for the next set of creators to run with the result. That is what's happening with IYKYK Newsroom. To push the creative vision out there a little bit more, IYKYKNews.com is putting up YouTube and Twitch channels that eventually will be integrated with the main site content. Currently I am actively looking for non-profit board members and a capable CEO / Publisher and Editorial Director who will guide the transition to 501c3 non-profit-status. Full disclosure: IYKYKNews currently is a project nested within The Foval Group LLC, but it will not stay there. It certainly isn't doing hard news yet, just a smattering of my own brainstorms. 🤣🤣🤣
The CAPSULE - IYKYK Newsroom Project is constructed to foster incubation of a whole ecosystem of independent activist journalism creative sources into a network of interoperable and co-supporting distribution nodes. The best way to fight fascism is to make it impossible for fascists to shut down news and information about the resistance to their despotism. It incorporates, but does not rely upon, a single technology or distribution path in order to reach the audience. To the contrary, it exploits any method it can reach to get the word out there – Internet, Mesh, AM/FM/UHF/VHF, SMS, RMS, shortwave, silent-drops/pickups, mobile, thumb-drive, car, bus, train, gas station touchscreen, Pony Express, whatever it takes.
So, if this idea intrigues you and you think you might have the chops to take this thing to the next level, drop me an email. -SF