Brian Moritz

Here's the much smarter and more thorough stuff that @lopatto.bsky.social had to say on this topic:

Yeah, so... Substack, I'm out. The Polymarket partnership is the last straw.

One thing I will miss about being on substack is using substack to talk shit about substack.

open.substack.com/pub/davekarp...

Brian is worth reading here. He is literally writing the book on gambling and its growing impact on sports journalism.

Why the Polymarket/Substack partnership is bad It strikes at the heart of the production of ethical sports journalism.

Special Sports Media Guy post, because the Polymarket-Substack partnership is bad, bad, so very, very bad.

Why this partnership could be a death knell to ethical, independent sports journalism online.

Will the new definition of newsworthiness in sports become "important enough to have a prediction market about it."

If Squarespace had a mailing list option that was worth a damn and not just a cash grab, this wouldn't be an issue.

I've gotta look at Ghost.

Is this bad?

(Also, is this the thing that pushes me off Substack?)

That's a really great point. Most of the conversation in this space has been about reporters at news organizations. But Substack has such a reach that posts can become news through this network ...

It raises the question: Are you writing this story because it's a real newsworthy topic? Because you have a good intertesting take?

Or because you can push readers to a gambling site and subtly suggest they can win some money on this.

It's all gross.

When we talk about the ethical questions posed to sports journalists, this is one the big ones. "Insider trading" is possible but unlikely for a lot of reasons. But writing stories and embedding gambling links to act on your story is a change in the fundamental promise you provide the reader.

One of the fundamental reasons this kind of thing stinks for reporters is that it raises questions about why you are writing a thing.

Writing "Will Giannis get traded?" one thing.

"Will Giannis get traded - and here's a link to bet on this actionable information" is fundamentally different.

Polymarket says “journalism is better when it’s backed by live markets” Predictions market Polymarket and Substack are now "exclusive," the companies announced. And the relationship getting serious is raising a few eyebrows. On Wednesday, Substack announced the new featu...

It would be so much easier to throw deserved scorn at Substack for this nonsense if ESPN and CNN had not already sold their souls to betting markets also.

www.niemanlab.org/2026/02/poly...

“That’s what I’m f—ing talking about!”


Alysa Liu as she leaves the ice 🔥

Good lord.

"Journalism is better when it's backed by live markets" is the kinda cursed phrase you never even imagined could be written.

At Sports Media Guy this week, a quick riff on how media outlets are writing about prediction markets - and why it's all a little weird.

open.substack.com/pub/sportsme...

This is not a policy oriented around helping students learn meaningful things. Training students to do school by avoiding AI detection is not worth anyone's time.

Adding this to tomorrow's post about it!

(And let's talk papers. Could have fun with it.)

Guaranteed the reds date back to Lanier.

Also, there are those of us who used to teach in computer labs.

AOC’s biggest problem if she runs for president is that the white men who control our media ecosystem will not so much put a finger on the scale to stop her as an entire hand

it can be done (see: Zohran) but it’s going to be blatant and it’s going to be infuriating

Godspeed, Max Mercy.

Also a time before technology allowed for easy writing from the field. Pre laptops and phones. The rewrite man might be the only person with the ability to typing the story up for the editors.

The "rewrite man" is an old journalistic role, an relic of the days when journalistic outfits had more reporters than news hole and lots of people to throw at breaking news. I am certain these are not the Plain Dealer's current problems.

"Removing writing from reporter's workloads" is one hell of a thing to say out loud.

(Safe travels!)

(Reposted to fix typo in the original)

“We are disrupting soup.”

“By removing writing from reporter‘s workloads” is one hell of a thing to say.

At least this kid didn't name his podcast after a Hamilton lyric in 2016. Imagine the horror of doing that.

(Please like and subscribe to The Other 51 oh shoot)

Israeli Soldiers Accused of Using Polymarket to Bet on Strikes The country’s internal security agency indicted a reservist and a civilian for security offenses, bribery and obstruction of justice in connection with the bets.

This is really, really dark.

www.wsj.com/world/middle...

I think the greatest gift college professors in the humanities can give to students right now is a seminar room where, for 80 minutes twice a week, nothing that happens to them is a sales pitch for an AI product.