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March 22nd, 2022 
Awake Goy 
This issue marks one year since I launched this Substack. The support I’ve received has been stupendous. Thank you so much to all my subscribers, paid and unpaid alike.
This newsletter is number one on Substack under Palestine and is even in the top 10 under “Israel”! But my proudest achievement came in June when I won a glowing endorsement from veteran radical journalist John Pilger, someone who has had a great influence on me.
Having readers who pay to support my journalism is a great morale boost and vote of confidence. And for independent journalism to thrive, it needs independent sources of funding: that’s where you come in. My paid subscription base has slowly but surely grown over this first year. It’s been a great start, but this next year I want to expand this project and start publishing more original journalism and analysis.
To do that, I will need more readers to become paying subscribers. Please consider it if you can afford to do so. It still only costs £4 per month (or £40 per year). You’re not locked into a contract and can cancel at any time (year-long subscribers who cancel will retain access to the articles behind the paywall until the end of their pre-paid year, but the subscription will no longer auto-renew).
Once you become a paid subscriber, you will have access to the full archive of posts, including those behind the paywall. There is now also a 7-day free trial, so you can try it out first.
This Substack was an experiment and a bit of a risk. I’m happy to say that it’s been a success, thanks to all of you. Those who’ve been subscribed since issue #1 will have noticed that the format has been through some evolution over time. I’ve experimented with different items in the newsletter and played with the features of Substack itself (which have constantly improved over the year). The comment section on my Substack posts, for example, are now open to everyone.
Originally, this was planned as a weekly round-up, with links to my journalism from the past week, along with links to articles by other great independent, radical journalists on topics that interest me.
But as the year progressed, the little bits of commentary I wrote to introduce the newsletter for the week expanded into articles in their own right. This was especially the case in May, during Israel’s most recent war of aggression against the Palestinian people:
The posts that have attracted the biggest readership are those with a strong, original news focus. People naturally tend to want to read things they can’t read anywhere else.
The topics I’ve addressed have also begun to expand out from Palestine. My most popular post to date has been one about the current war in Ukraine. I’m happy with this, since the intention with this Substack was always to expand my horizons beyond Palestine. The name of this Substack, “Palestine is Still the Issue,” is meant to signify the idea that, no matter which topic I cover, Palestine will still be the moral issue of our era and the topic I always return to.
Changes
The expansion of the first part of the weekly newsletter into an article in its own right meant that the list of my own and others’ recommended articles tended to end up marginalised, tacked onto the end of the post and sometimes neglected. A similar problem applied to the list of my appearances on TV, podcasts, YouTube channels and so forth.
However, when I opened a comment thread this past Friday asking for feedback on the first year of my newsletter, several different readers volunteered unprompted that they like the weekly roundup of articles, so I don’t intend to abolish the format altogether.
What I’ve decided to do starting soon is break the newsletter up into several different posts per week:
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Column/analysis type posts about current news events in Palestine or about whatever interests me on the day. These will be sent on the usual Tuesday morning time slot, as well as at other times during the week. The majority of these posts will remain free, but I will soon start putting some of these behind the paywall.
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A weekly list of links of recommended reading: including my own articles, as well as those of my colleagues, friends, comrades and peers. I am going to start posting this every Friday — either at midday or around 5pm: I’m currently undecided. But the idea is that this will be a useful round-up of reading for the weekend. This will remain free for all.
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Lots of individual posts to promote my appearances on podcasts, YouTube, TV stations, radio and so forth. These will be posted as and when they happen. Over the past few years, I’ve been posting these at asawinstanley.com, but from now on I will be doing that here instead (I’ve got a backlog from the last few month).
All this will mean the end of the old school “newsletter” format I used for the first year of this Substack — and the end of numbered issues.
But while this issue, #47, marks the last of these type of newsletters, it also marks the start of a new era for Palestine is Still the Issue.
I also have other, bigger, plans for the year ahead, which I won’t reveal until they’re ready. Stay tuned.
Let me know what you think of these changes in the comment section below.
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