Again in March, I used to be attempting to influence my dad to cease taking the subway to work in Manhattan and be a part of me upstate. So I paid $75 to Leonard Marshall, a retired New York Giants defensive lineman we each cherished within the 1980s, to ship the message.

“I put a couple of guys within the hospital, Bob,” he told my father solemnly. “I would like you to play protection in these loopy instances.”

It labored, and my father hasn’t been to Instances Sq. since.

I had reached Mr. Marshall by way of Cameo, a service that means that you can purchase brief movies from minor celebrities. I additionally used Cameo to buy a pep speak from an Olympic triathlete for my daughter ($15), an ingratiating monologue for my new boss from a former Boston Crimson Sox manager ($100) and a failed Twitter joke delivered by the motion star Chuck Norris ($229.99).

Cameo is blowing up on this unusual season as a result of “each superstar can be a gig economic system employee,” says Steven Galanis, the corporate’s chief government. They’re caught at dwelling, bored and typically exhausting up for money as performances, productions and sporting occasions dry up. The corporate’s weekly bookings have grown to 70,000 from about 9,000 in early January, it says, and Mr. Galanis stated he anticipated bringing in additional than $100 million in bookings this 12 months, of which the corporate retains 25 %. The corporate expects to promote its millionth video this week.

Cameo is, on its face, a service that permits housebound idiots to blow cash on foolish shout-outs. Seen one other means, nevertheless, it’s a brand new mannequin media firm, sitting on the intersection of a set of highly effective developments which can be accelerating within the current disaster. There’s the rise of easy, digital direct funds, that are changing promoting as the foremost supply of media income. There’s the rising energy of expertise, trickling down from superstars to half-forgotten former athletes and even working journalists. And there’s the outdated promise of the sooner web that you could possibly make a residing if you happen to simply had “1,000 true followers” — a promise that advertising-based companies from blogs to YouTube channels did not ship.

The truth is, on this new economic system, some individuals could possibly make a residing off simply 100 true followers, as Li Jin, a former associate on the enterprise capital agency Andreessen Horowitz, argued recently. Ms. Jin calls this new panorama the “ardour economic system.” She argues that apps like Uber and DoorDash are constructed to erase the variations between particular person drivers or meals supply individuals. However related instruments, she says, can be utilized to “monetize individuality.”

Many of those developments are nicely developed in China, however right here in the US the eagerness economic system covers everybody from the small retailers utilizing Shopify to the drawing instructors of the schooling platform Udemy.

Within the mainstream coronary heart of the media enterprise, each artists and writers are shifting shortly to search out new enterprise fashions as enormous swaths of the media enterprise have been wounded or shut down by the coronavirus pandemic. At Patreon, the primary and broadest of the large providers connecting writers and performers to audiences, the co-founder Jack Conte stated he was delighted lately to see one among his favourite bands, Of Montreal, release music on the platform.

“Conventional music coming to Patreon is a watershed second,” he stated.

Within the information enterprise, journalists are carving out new paths on Substack, a e-newsletter service. Its most profitable particular person voices — just like the China skilled Invoice Bishop and the liberal political author Judd Legum — are incomes nicely into six figures yearly for sending common newsletters to subscribers, although no particular person has crossed the million-dollar mark, the corporate stated.

For some writers, Substack is a approach to get their work out of the shadow of an establishment. Emily Atkin felt that want intensely when a local weather discussion board she organized final 12 months for presidential candidates, whereas she was a author for The New Republic, collapsed amid a scandal over an unrelated column about Mayor Pete Buttigieg that appeared in that publication.

Now, stated Ms. Atkin, who writes a confrontational local weather e-newsletter referred to as Heated, she’s “shockingly hopeful.”

“I don’t have any layoffs taking place at my e-newsletter, so I’m doing higher than many of the information trade,” she stated.

Ms. Atkin, who’s 11th on Substack’s rating of paid newsletters and was extra keen than Mr. Bishop or Mr. Legum to speak intimately concerning the enterprise, stated she was on observe to gross $175,000 this 12 months from greater than 2,500 subscribers. Out of that, she’ll pay for well being care, a analysis assistant and a 10 % payment to Substack, amongst different prices.

For others, Substack is a approach to keep on with work they’re obsessed with when a job goes away, as Lindsay Gibbs discovered when the liberal information website ThinkProgress shut down final 12 months and took her beat on sexism in sports activities with it.

Now, she has greater than 1,000 subscribers to Power Plays, paying as a lot as $72 a 12 months.

Each of them began with $20,000 advances from the platform.

“The viewers connecting immediately with you and paying immediately is a revolutionary change to the enterprise mannequin,” Substack’s chief government, Chris Finest, advised me.

It’s exhausting to think about even essentially the most profitable writers, like Mr. Bishop and Ms. Atkin, posing a serious risk to the titans of media anytime quickly, particularly as a couple of massive establishments — whether or not in information or streaming video — dominate every market. However the two writers’ path to success factors to the fact that the most important risk to these establishments might come from their proficient workers.

That dynamic was on show in a confrontation between Barstool Sports activities and the hosts of its hit podcast, “Name Her Daddy,” as my colleague Taylor Lorenz reported final week. Media firm stars, with massive social media followings and increasingly methods to make cash, are much less and fewer keen to behave like workers. (“The ‘Name Her Daddy’ ladies can be making over half one million {dollars} a 12 months with me,” Mr. Galanis of Cameo stated. “Excessive Pitch Erik from ‘The Howard Stern Present’ is making low six figures.”)

Substack represents a radically completely different different, wherein the “media firm” is a service and the journalists are in cost. It’s what one of many pioneers of the fashionable e-newsletter enterprise, the tech analyst Ben Thompson, describes as a “faceless” writer. And you may think about it or its opponents providing extra providers, from insurance coverage to advertising and marketing to modifying, reversing the dynamic of the outdated top-down media firm and producing one thing extra like a expertise company, the place the person journalist is the star and the boss, and the editor is merely on name.

The brand new passion-economy media corporations are converging in some methods. Those like Patreon and Substack, which function primarily within the background, at the moment are cautious methods to bundle their choices, their executives stated. Medium, which lets you subscribe to its full bundle of writers, is on the lookout for methods to foster extra intimate connections between people and their followers, its founder, Ev Williams, stated. Cameo, which has a entrance web page in its app and web site however is usually promoting one-off shout-outs, is shifting towards a mannequin that’s extra like subscribing to a celeb: For a value, you’ll be capable to ship direct messages that seem in a precedence inbox.

“We expect messages forwards and backwards is the place the puck goes with Cameo,” Mr. Galanis stated.

Is that this excellent news? The rise of those new corporations may additional shake our faltering establishments, splinter our fragmented media and cement superstar tradition. Or they might pay for a brand new wave of highly effective impartial voices and supply regular work for individuals doing useful work — like journalists overlaying slender, vital bits of the world — who don’t have one other supply of revenue. Like the entire collision of the web and media, it would probably be a few of each.

In Silicon Valley, the place the East Coast establishments of journalism are sometimes seen as one other set of hostile gatekeepers to be disrupted, main figures are cheering a potential challenger. Mr. Finest, the Substack chief, advised me that the enterprise capitalist Marc Andreessen, whose agency has invested within the firm, stated he hoped it might “do to massive media corporations what enterprise capital did to massive tech corporations” — that’s, peel off their largest stars with the promise of cash and freedom and create new varieties of stories corporations.

One of many issues I discover most heartening in these unequal instances, although, is the creation of some new area for a center class of journalists and entertainers — the thought that you would be able to make a residing, if not a killing, by working exhausting for a restricted viewers. Even individuals who play a modest position in a cultural phenomenon can get among the take, which was what occurred with the Netflix documentary “Tiger King.”

When the documentary hit massive in March, Cameo signed up 10 of its ragtag solid of, largely, beginner zookeepers. That got here simply in time for Kelci Saffery, finest identified on the present for returning to work quickly after dropping a hand to a tiger. Mr. Saffery now lives in California, and misplaced his job at a furnishings warehouse when the pandemic hit. To his shock, he has earned about $17,000, in addition to a measure of recognition, even because the requests are slowing down.

“On daily basis I’m at the least getting one, and for me that also signifies that one individual every single day is considering, ‘Hey, this may be cool,’ and to me that’s important,” he stated. As for the cash, “that might ship one among my kids to varsity.”