Is there life after the newsroom?

The exodus of journalists, voluntary or not, from news organizations has led some to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Rather than retreating into the world of public relations or marketing, journalists are building their own audiences through portals like Substack and Ghost. Some are highly successful, others less so, but the trend is growing.

In 2024, Press Gazette found, there were at least 3,875 layoffs across newspapers, broadcasters, and digital media businesses in the U.S. and U.K. This comes on the heels of years of job cuts, including some 8,000 in 2023. In an uncertain industry, many journalists are choosing to control their own futures and build a direct connection with their audiences.

Where are all the journalists going?

Faced with a rapidly disintegrating job market and traditional media ecosystem, even big-name journalists like CNN’s Jim Acosta are turning to outlets like Substack. Quite often, a Substack newsletter is just one owned channel that journalists are using to reach fans of their work. As Newsweek reports, “Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan, former New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss and Vox cofounder Matthew Yglesias are all on Substack. So are FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver, Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer, veteran journalist Dan Rather and Aaron Rupar, an independent journalist who has nearly a million followers on X, formerly Twitter, for his video clips documenting political events from a progressive angle.

Some make it big

It’s not just layoffs that are driving this shift. Disillusioned with the dominance of algorithmically determined traffic, and the need to constantly promote their own work, journalists are deciding they might as well own their efforts. Substack is essentially just a tech platform that allows writers (or anyone, really) to build and monetize an audience. Journalists benefit directly from subscriptions.

According to Newsweek, Substack “...is currently home to 50,000 publishers who monetize their content on the site. The top 10 publishers collectively bring in more than $40 million a year. In the Politics and News categories, more than 30 publications make at least $1 million annually.”

And it’s not all about newsletters. Mehdi Hasan launched Zeteo News after leaving MSNBC. It’s a video-first media company with plans to launch an entire documentary on the platform. Meanwhile, others are teaming up to create news organizations like The Bulwark, which provides paid subscribers with special newsletters and podcasts, in addition to free newsletters. With more than 39,000 paid subscribers, it reportedly brought in more than $6 million in 2024.

Beyond freelancing

Generally, being a freelance journalist for conventional news organizations is a tough slog. Rates are shrinking. According to Reuters research, some outlets don’t want to pay at all, trying to convince journalists to work for exposure instead of pay. Once they burn out of the constant hustle and low wages, they move to “...jobs in communications, copywriting, consultancy, and teaching.” So, it’s no wonder more successful journalists are circumventing the establishment media and making their case to the readers themselves.

Build your own brand

The key to success for these enterprising journalists is being able to build an audience. That often means developing a niche with enough potential subscribers to pay the bills. It helps to be Dan Rather or have a million followers on X, formerly Twitter. But is any of this a real threat to legacy media?

Sci Tech Today reports, “As of December 2024, Substack’s network includes over 4 million paid subscriptions and tens of millions of active subscribers.” Most news organizations would kill for those kinds of numbers.

The question, ultimately, will be whether audiences are willing to pay for access to multiple journalists through Substack, the way they pay for multiple streaming services. Or, will the breadth of coverage provided by legacy media organizations win out?

News publishers more like record labels?

INMA’s Greg Piechota pointed to another option when he shared a recent conversation with Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer, in which Döpfner suggested that the model for news media companies in the future will be more like a record label instead of a traditional newspaper. The goal: to support talent instead of owning it.