 Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to episode 23 of Informed and Engaged, where today we'll be unpacking the ideas and solutions impacting the future media landscape. I'm your host, John Belgrad, Journalism Program Officer at Knight Foundation. Some quick housekeeping. Join today's conversation. Be sure to drop any questions into the chat on the platform or across the internet on social at hashtag KnightLive. We'll be coming back to your questions at the end for a Q&A session. I'm really excited for today's episode where we'll be exploring a journalist jump into solo entrepreneurship. Is going solo sustainable? What can local news providers learn from this model in a reporter's use of emerging tech platforms to build a publication, to build community, and tell the stories that support a healthy democracy? Our guest today, Casey Newton, founder and editor of Platformer, a publication exploring the intersection of tech and democracy. Before starting Platformer in late 2020, Newton was the longtime Silicon Valley editor of The Verge. While there, his stories on the lives of American content moderators for Facebook and Google sparked a national conversation about the working conditions for this essential but often neglected part of the workforce and was the finalist for the National Magazine Award for reporting. Please join me in welcoming Casey Newton. Casey, welcome. Good afternoon. Thanks for being here with us. Thank you. It's nice to be here, John. Awesome. Let's jump right into it. Going independent, going solo. Why did you choose to start Platformer? Yeah. There's a short answer to that. I can sort of tell an answer to that story at any length, but it was a few different things. One, and I know a lot about local journalism, I'd been a reporter for almost 20 years at that point, and my career had been marked by so much turbulence and uncertainty. I was a newspaper reporter that saw newspapers get disrupted by the web. I was a reporter on the web that saw the web get disrupted by social networks, and it wasn't too hard to predict that eventually there was going to be some wave of disruption that I was going to be caught up in yet again, and so part of me just wanted to see if I could catch a wave instead of being crushed by one, and because there had been this wave of new tools that had been introduced allowing people like me to go independent, it really seemed like something worth considering. The second big factor was just the pandemic. I had been writing a newsletter for three years. I wake up every day in this house. All of a sudden, there was no office to go to. There was no business travel. There were no coworkers. No matter what I did, I was just going to be waking up here and writing a newsletter, and so I sort of felt less attached, I think, to my media company that I had before, and then the final thing was just the economics of it are really good for the kind of thing that I want to do, which is essentially a reinvented trade publication. I sell it for 10 bucks a month, and ultimately, I just don't need that many people to make it successful. If I can find 1,000 subscribers, I've got a good job. If I've got 2,000 subscribers, I've got a great job, and if I can get 3,000 subscribers, I've got a better job than anyone will give me in journalism. At the time that I left to start Platformer, I had about 24,000 free subs to my newsletter. I thought, you know what, over the next 10 years, I bet I can get it up into the thousands. Those are some of the big reasons why I made the jump. Awesome. There's a ton in there that I want to impact, but let's jump into kind of being your own boss, running your own publication. How is it, how is running Platformer different than what you're used to for 20 years, being in a newsroom from the support, the colleagues, the camaraderie, the thought ping-pong, how is all that different? Yeah, I mean, I think the solitude is definitely the biggest thing, although, again, a lot of that solitude had been enforced by the pandemic, and so I was living through it anyway. But look, I loved working in newsrooms, right, even like in these latter, the sort of modern era where everyone in a newsroom just sort of had their headphones on, like listening to music and wasn't talking to each other that much, which was my experience at my last few jobs. But obviously, it's great to get into a conference room, bang out ideas, that sort of like hum of excitement when a really big story is breaking and people are running all over. You know, that part, I absolutely miss. But I had been doing my newsletter for about three years before I left The Verge. Like I had essentially already started a publication within the publication and had gotten really used to the, this workflow of like waking up in the morning, figuring out what I was going to write and see what reporting I needed to do to go support it. So I think increasingly I had just been drawn to more of that kind of lone wolf style of reporting. And it made it easier to break away. How much of that three year runway, I mean, runway experience building that out, do you think has influenced your decision aid to take the jump? And then secondly, has, has affected your ability to be successful both in the short term and long term at what you're talking about. You're talking about 3000 paid subscribers. How much has that contributed to it? I mean, it's been huge. I'm a very risk averse person. I'm my mother's son. And so I would not have made this jump if I thought it was going to flop. And because I had three years to essentially beta test it, like I just had a great gift that that many people won't, you know, the gift of doing that was one, essentially, you know, finding product market fit, as we would say here in Silicon Valley, right, figuring out how to make something that people want to getting some initial amount of distribution, right, like build that subscriber base. But three, like also figure out if it was sustainable, right? I write four columns a week. It's a lot. And I had to figure out how do you actually go about, you know, doing that week to week to week. So having years to figure that out on it, you know, in advance is a gift that, you know, most people unfortunately will not be afforded. So someone who might not be afforded that someone thinking about I want to start my own publication, I know the tools are out there. I know the the beat that I want to cover, whatever that may be, what are some learnings that you might be able to share from how you figured out that four times a week was the right cadence or the price point that you're charging at? Or what are some things that that you've learned through, I guess, testing through experience along the way? Yeah, I mean, I think the the number one is identifying the right niche, you know, most mass media right now goes really broad and shallow. And that's due to the incentives of the ad supported web, right? When you're writing for the ad supported web, your incentive is to take as many swings as possible and answer what time the Super Bowl is as many times a day as you can in hopes that it's going to generate some massive amount of traffic. I thought that the real value was going to be in going narrow and deep, which is why, you know, I picked an area that I'm personally obsessed with this intersection of tech and democracy and and see what I could do around that. And that's the single most important thing that I did, I think, was just figure out, like, what is a subject that is going to be more important in five years than it is today, and then go try to stake out some early ground there and really develop it. So I think everything else really flowed from there. You know, a second thing I would say is a lot of people I know who have been reluctant to start newsletters or publications are reluctant because they worry, well, I'm not an expert in that subject. Like, I don't know everything about that subject. And what I always like to tell them is you pick a subject that you want to write a newsletter about to become an expert in that subject, right? Like, I know so much more about tech and democracy than I did three and a half years ago. And it was because I just kept showing up every day, figuring out what we had learned that day, asking some questions. And I just think that that can be a really approach, you know, it's a weird thing to consider, but publications these days generally are not started out of a spirit of inquiry, they're started out of a spirit of like, which part of the advertising market do we think we can break a chunk off of? And I think that's why you find this like sameness and homogeneity in so many media products. So I think just like beginning with a spirit of sincere curiosity about a really, really important subject is likely to answer, you know, a million other questions for you as you get started. So you've, you've, you've mentioned a couple of times kind of the, the impact that advertising I think has had on your career on the path that you've taken in where you are today. So platformers all is 100% of the revenue from subscriptions right now. Yeah, I mean, it's so I have like made money in a handful of other ways, but like over 90% of the the money I made since I've started it, I would say has has been directly from readers. Do you think about expanding beyond now that you have captured attention? I mean, you've built trust, you built the attention, you built the community. Do you think about expanding beyond subscriptions? What might that look like? Are you staying, has now focused on subscriptions? Right now I'm pretty focused on subscriptions, like the, the product isn't even a year old. And it's doing well. And, you know, one of my heroes and mentors in this space is Ben Thompson, who started with a subscription newsletter, I believe in 2013 and has never wavered from that model. What he's done instead is just figure out cool new things to put in the subscription. So it's like now you can get Stratechery via a podcast as well as email. And so that, you know, I think it's 12 bucks a month now that you're giving Ben keeps becoming more valuable to you over time. I really like that idea. I really like the idea of giving people a valuable product and not just trying to turn platformer into some financial instrument that's like monetizing every conceivable way. But, you know, candidly, I will say like, I have thought about some kind of advertising adjacent things, right? Like I've talked to a couple of organizations about, for example, maybe sponsoring a free week on platformer, like right now only one edition each week is, is free, but maybe, you know, some advertiser would come in and sponsor a week where all subscribers got to read all four editions and maybe that would inspire more people to convert. So it's something that I've considered, but it just doesn't feel like a really urgent avenue to explore at the moment. Any, any merch or dare I ask NFTs coming soon? My dear friend, Helen Havlack, handcrafted me the first official piece of platformer merchandise, which is this ceramic coffee mug. And unfortunately, it is not for sale. But yes, I do think there will be some kind of merch in the future. But, you know, it's like when you're writing like a reinvented trade publication, you just don't have a lot of people coming to you being like, you know, when can I get the hoodie or the laptop sticker? So, you know, again, like it's something that I'll probably do at some point just hasn't been a top priority. If the mug is ever going to, I would love to be the first customer. I have a nice little cup collection, little mug collection. So I'd love to add a platformer one into that to this valuable market research for me. Wonderful. Let's talk about building trust. You talked a little bit about not wanting to turn this into a financial engine. Your financial sustainability, but really your livelihood is so closely connected to your readership to the community, to the audience that you've built. How do you deal with that tension when you might need to be reporting on things difficult tense situations or where there's challenges in the reporting you're doing that go head to head with the financial incentives of what you're building here? Yeah, it's a really good question, right? It's like, how do you avoid getting captured by the people who are paying your bills? You know, I think every journalist faces a version of this question, right? Like when I worked at newspapers, the question was like, how do you avoid pissing off all the publishers friends at the country club, you know? And then, you know, when you work for digital web properties, sometimes it's the advertisers that are super mad at you, right? For some story that you write. The way I think about it is I'm trying to serve two populations simultaneously. There is a group of tech executives and tech workers who pay to subscribe to platformer. And then there are people who are just like global citizens, you know, maybe they work in civil society, maybe they work in academia, maybe they work in students, I'm sorry, and maybe they are students. Or maybe they're just really concerned about what technology is doing to the world, right? And so both of those groups are putting pressure on me every single day, right? Like just to take Facebook as an example, because that's the company that I write about the most, there is a group of people that think that I am carrying water for Facebook too much. And then there's a group of people who think that I'm being too hard on Facebook every day. And my goal is of course always to tell the truth. It is not to remain like lashed to some sort of strange neutrality between those groups. But it is useful to be caught in between them, right? Because I do think that often it does push you to a smarter, better researched, more nuanced take. So I think I would be more concerned about myself and my own editorial integrity if all of my paid subscribers like worked for one company. But the goal is to sort of always be expanding the aperture through which platformer sees the world. So I'm bringing in new stories, companies, people, characters. And I feel like it just sort of helps me maintain that skeptical eye. I think that's important. So as much as your revenue stream is very much so in one bucket, being able to balance it out between really diversifying within that of who's at the table to get those different voices and keep some health and traction runway to what you're building here. Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm fortunate in that I write about the technology industry, which affects every single person in some way, right? And so the overall potential audience is broad, even though, you know, I have a very small piece of that, it is still relatively diverse and in the opinions of that group. So that's been useful. So just yesterday, a nightgallup report went out, we've been doing research around trust meeting democracy. And there's a there's an interesting news lens report that's really trying to understand the consumption habits and sentiment of readers of audiences in the distributed media landscape. And one thing that they found is outlets brands play an outsized role in shaping judgments about the quality of the news. So how are you thinking about that in approaching platformer as a brand is case is Casey Newton the brand is platform of the brand? And how is that different from a year ago when you're at the verge and had the whole newsroom in the brand air? Yeah, I mean, I feel like I have a sense that I have earned more trust by going independent, at least with some of the sources that I talked with some of the CEOs. And, you know, while I haven't dug deep into why that is, I've thought a lot about the headline issue, right? Like whenever I used to work in newsrooms inevitably, you'd write some nuanced piece, the editor would slap a very spicy headline on it, the sources would call and they would say, how could you say that? And I would say, well, you know, wasn't me, it was the editor. And even if that is true, and it usually is, that's the sort of thing that undermines trust, right? And it means that the next time that company or that source wants to go to you, they're going to think twice, because they're going to think, well, I mean, no Casey, but I don't really know who all I'm dealing with over there. With platformer, it's different, right? Like, you know that it's just me that you're dealing with. So if you trust me, you're going to trust platformer. And I do think that that has a trust building effect. I also have a page that I put up for platformer in an effort to build trust that lays out a bunch of things, you know, my ethics policy, obviously, but also like here are the questions that I'm trying to answer in this newsletter. Here is basically how I see the world. Here's how I go about my reporting and where I gather information from. Here's like when I will use anonymous sources. And it sort of just goes on down the list. And I just try to be as open as possible with people about how I do my work. And the hope is then that when they read me, they'll think like, okay, well, I know what I'm getting with this person. And that's not my original idea, by the way, that's a Jay Rosen idea. I think it's brilliant. I think every reporter should do it. But I found it very helpful in building up that kind of trust. That's one thing I immediately appreciated of the newsletter. It was probably as soon as I subscribed before I was even a paying subscriber, just the first email is front and center. Here's my ethics policy. Here's what you're getting. And I thought that was great to get a sense of that. So kind of in that vein, where objectiveness and fairness and trustworthiness is so just hot topics across media, across journalism, are there some other things that you need to do to continue to maintain that? Or is it just once you put that ethics policy out first, it's the first email somebody seems when they engage with you. Then beyond that, you have the daily four times a week of relationship, a chance to kind of build that beyond with them. Are there things beyond that that you're leveraging or working with to build that relationship, build that trust? Yeah. I mean, one of my favorite sections that I publish in the newsletter is called pushback. And it's just people telling me that I was wrong about things. So the virtue of having an audience that is really smart is that they're happy to kind of come in and tell you some obvious thing that you missed. And so I would say probably on average of like twice a week or particularly when I write something that like really lands with people, right? It tends to generate more responses. And I will always put that in. And I've talked with people who will tell me like they don't even read the links at the bottom of the newsletter, but they always read the pushback section because they, I think it is frankly a novelty weirdly to find any kind of reporter engaging in good faith with their critics, right? Publications used to have letters to the editor section, which I love. Like I read them obsessively. They were so fun. And now it's a very rare thing, right? Everything has just become like a comment section, which is usually a cesspool. So I think like a sort of dedicated section of your newsletter, where you just let critics sound off and, you know, and not kind of over rotate on, you know, getting defensive about, you know, whatever you've been caught making a mistake about can be super helpful. So you've got such a close relationship with your audience. And one of the, one of the coolest things I've seen now in the last month with side channel, you grouped up with a couple other reporters and pulled this together. And I mean, there's just, there's so much going on there. It's hard for me to keep up, but tell us about side channel and what the vision for that is. Yeah. So, you know, I, because I have this relationship with readers where I would often hear from them, I would think like, one, I wish that I had a way to talk with them on a more regular basis. And two, I wish that there was a way where they could meet each other. And so I started thinking about Discord, right? Discord is this company that was started to serve gamers and help them chat with each other while they're shooting people up online, but has grown to encompass some other uses. I'd also been looking for a way to collaborate with other people who were doing the same thing that I was, because I do miss that newsroom. And I, you know, I miss having that, you know, Slack channel where, you know, you sort of, you know, talking about whatever is going on the day, you know, with other journalists who maybe share your point of view. So I started reaching out to people. And the basic idea was, what if there was a way where a group of independent journalists get together who have paid newsletters. And if you pay for any of our newsletters, then we'll let you in to the entire community. And I tried to find people who had sort of adjacent beats, right? So it's like, I write about tech and democracy. We also have a person who writes about remote work. We have somebody who writes about startups and venture capital. We have somebody who writes about cybersecurity. We have somebody who writes about media. And so you drop in there. And on one end, like there is kind of a coherence to it. But on the other hand, it does spin off in every direction. Because at the end of the day, it's like thousands of people who have, you know, different, different ideas about things. So yeah, so, you know, we launched it for over 4,000 people signed up within the first week to just kind of hop in and see what's going on. And now every day we have a vibrant conversation. And I mean, it's useful to me in so many ways. Like one, I get to get direct feedback on what I'm writing about that day. Two, people like ask me questions like, hey, Casey, have you ever thought about writing about this? I've already broken one story based on an anonymous tip that I got through my Discord subscriber. So there's just so many ways that I think trying to build community around a publication and giving people direct access to the journalists can just open up a really cool future. Is there any structure to it or you're kind of throwing it all at the wall, letting it kind of take its own form between the journalist and the, I mean, 4,000 plus, that's pretty crazy to have just jumped into that. Do you have a big vision for what that turns into or just letting it kind of take its form as it continues to grow up? We're letting it be pretty experimental right now. You know, right now it's basically a volunteer collective that is held together by a Google doc. It could potentially be something more than that, right? Like if we wanted to do a conference, for example, which is something that we've talked about doing, we'd probably need to spin up an LLC, you know, merch, we probably could do without doing an LLC. But the whole idea was, how can we collaborate in ways that help each other, but without becoming like our main thing, right? Like for, I want Side Channel to be a force multiplier for me and for everyone else who is a part of it, as opposed to like something that we're trying to turn into a next generation media company, you know, even though in a lot of ways it is. So I think we just have to remain open to everything. And I mean, it's still like so early and there's so many like things to figure out. But you know, what I'll say so far is it's just been thrilling to be a part of. Jumping a little bit to your to your beat to what you're covering the platforms, but really trying to pull lessons from what can local learn from what you're doing. These platforms are huge, they're massive. And there's many of them. How do you go about as a one man shop now? How do you go about prioritizing what to cover and where to focus your time and energy? And again, thinking through that from the lens of local, what can local reporters learn about covering local government, which is also a huge entity in its own right? Yeah, totally. I mean, I'm glad you asked about that because, you know, I am a formal former local reporter. I spent spent eight years covering state and local news, mostly in Arizona. And I think that there are so many lessons that I've learned doing platformer that an enterprising reporter working in some community could easily pick up and run with. And again, it's because the economics of it are just really good. You can charge not that much and get not that many people to subscribe to you and still be making about what I was making when I was a local news reporter. So I hope this is something that local, you know, newspapers or, you know, local journalists pick up and run with, you know, in terms of deciding what to cover, you know, I mean, I have it super easy because, you know, the companies that I write most about are like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Snap with some Apple and Amazon thrown in there. All of them are basically as big as countries. And something happens inside one of those countries every day or between two of those countries every day that is just an obvious jumping off point, right, for somebody who wants to write a thousand or 1200 words. And then by writing those columns, which are more opinion driven, often reporting opportunities will emerge, right? Maybe it's an interview with a CEO of one of those companies, maybe I get a tip from inside one of those companies about something that needs more attention. And then I write those and then those lead to more opinion pieces, right? And so there's like, I think kind of a nice cycle there, right, where there's original reporting, there's analysis and then both things feed each other. I think that's a model that any reporter can pick up that is not a model that is encouraged at newspapers, which wants you to just sort of write inverted pyramid style stuff forever. I don't think that's the right way to do a newsletter. But that's kind of how I do platformer. You know, I'll tell you, if I had like just graduated from a state university somewhere, you know, and maybe wasn't getting it was having trouble getting hired at a big publication, I would start a probably a sub stack, I would start going to a city council meeting, right? And I'm writing maybe two reported pieces a week about what was going on in the city. Maybe I would include links to some other coverage of the city or the region. And I would just send it out and I'd probably do it for free for a few weeks a month, or maybe you turn on like optional paid subscription right away, just kind of see how big you can get it, right? Like I worked on local newspapers, they're overwhelming, right? There are hundreds and hundreds of pages long, nobody finished everything. But if you send me a thousand, 1200 words three times a week about my local area, I'm going to be really excited about that. If you do a good job, and I'll probably pay you five or 10 bucks a month. And if I do, you're only going to need to find a thousand of me to have a really good salary. So, you know, sub stack is investing right now in people who are trying something like this. And I hope it's successful. Because, you know, that's what's actually going to bring local journalism back is going to be these solo entrepreneurs, you know, and not I think some of these other initiatives which people have been trying for years and years and years and have gone nowhere. Looking at that recent college grad or looking at yourself deciding, I'm going to go into the newsroom, I want to be a journalist, that's the career. But who doesn't have the network or the resources, or if you're talking about doing a newsletter once a week or going to one meeting a week to provide coverage. What about what they're losing out on in terms of being in the newsroom, having that mentorship, the bumping arms, the seeing the the veterans who have been there done that to learn from. I imagine there's a lot making some assumptions here, but I imagine you picked up a lot in those early years. What are maybe some outside the traditional newsrooms? I'm trying not to say decentralized way that this person can pick up on that experience and elevate and grow in their career. Yeah, so to be clear, my preference is that newsrooms still existed. I wish that we hadn't seen a single layoff in journalism in the past 20 years. But in a world where that's not the case, we have to make do with what we have. And what we have right now is Twitter. If you are a young journalist and you feel like you're not connected to other journalists, get on Twitter and follow all of the journalists that you think are good or interesting, start interacting with them, like their tweets, respond on occasion. See what kind of connections that you can build there. Follow people on your beat. What is your area of interest? You want to cover city council? Great. Follow the city council on Twitter. Engage with them. It is not actually hard to break into almost any beat because it is a rare experience for most people to have anyone express genuine curiosity in them. So I don't think you're going to find it as hard as you think. Will you miss out on some mentorship opportunities? Yes. Do we need to rebuild those in other ways? Yes. But I think that the answer we can find online, we can build online communities. I bet there are probably slacks and discords full of young journalists who are exchanging tips with one another. And if they don't exist, then the Knight Foundation should start building one of those. But those are some of the things that I would suggest. Before I joined Substack, I asked Substack if they would start a mentorship program specifically so I could do some of this work. So we're now through our first cohort of mentees. It was fantastic. I can't wait to get started with the next one. And if you're working on something in local journalism and you want mentorship about this, please just reach out to me. I'm happy to get on the phone with you and tell you anything I can. Awesome. So I sense a little bit of love or a lot of love for newsrooms and for help people rise through. Would you ever go back to a newsroom or are you stone cold set on building your own newsroom and building it up? Or are you just doing platformer show of one and see where that goes? So I think I'm about eight months in a platformer. So it would probably be weird if right now I was like, I can't wait to get back to a newsroom. I started to feel like I've just started to stretch my wings here and see what I could do. But look, life was long. Lots of things can happen. Who knows? But what I'll say is a big reason that I started a platformer was I wanted control of my own destiny. I did not want a venture capital firm or a private equity firm or a telecom that had bought my company to come in and say, we don't have a job for you anymore because the ad market turned sour. So my main goal is to put myself in a position where what I'm doing is truly sustainable and that I cannot lose my job. And right now I do not see a more sustainable path in journalism than being supported by your readers. So jumping into Q&A now we got a big question for you. But I think it's in line with your work. So I think I'd love to give it to you see where you're at. Could you speak more about the relationship between big tech and democracy? Is it helping or harming the future of local news? I mean, it's definitely harming the future of local news, right? Because local news is advertising supported. And for every new dollar that is spent on advertising online, 90% of it goes to either Facebook or Google. So every website that you're reading that has ads on it is fighting for those 10 cents on a dollar, which has led to a million bad incentives starting with every every website becoming a version of every other website, right? This is why every website night now tells you what time the Super Bowl is because that's their best chance to get one cent out of that 10 cents that is the only thing available to them. So it's been really, really harmful in that sense. And, you know, Google and Facebook in particular are now coming back around and they're trying to fund some journalism efforts. They send me endless emails about the Google Facebook initiative or, you know, the Google news initiative and the, you know, the Facebook news initiative. And, you know, what we know from these initiatives is that while I'm sure they're well intentioned, the overall trend is the same. We're still losing tens of thousands of journalists every year. So I just don't think that there is a good argument for them being helpful to democracy in that sense. Now, at the same time, there is also, there are also social benefits to having digital tools through which people can express their political views, right? I think, you know, I'm gay. I think gay marriage was helped along by the fact that we saw a lot of extremely photogenic queer couples getting photographed all over Facebook and Instagram for many years. And I think it really did turn around public opinion on LGBT issues in this country. I think more recently, the Me Too movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, those were aided enormously by the existence of social media. So, you know, was that a pro-democratic for us? I would argue that in some ways that it is. You know, what everybody always wants is like, okay, but on net, is it good or bad? And I just think it's impossible to develop a satisfactory weighing mechanism for those sorts of things. I think you just sort of have to like break out individual pieces and consider them one at a time. Flipping it on the other side, is there a role or what role do you see government playing in this? I mean, with the platforms taking so much of the advertising budgets and we saw what happened in Australia recently and what's happening in Europe, do you see that coming to the States? I guess that was two completely different questions. But what role, let's go with, what role do you see that playing in the United States, particularly around local journalism? Yeah, I mean, the, I hate the Australia law because it's basically just a shakedown that pays off Rupert Murdoch, right? It doesn't actually help local journalism. There's no requirement in the Australia law that a single dollar go to a journalist's salary. So, the idea that we're all supposed to be excited that, you know, finally a government stood up to Facebook and Google, it's just dumb, you know, it was just a shakedown. You know, what I'm actually in favor of is public media, right? If you look at countries that have healthy democracies, you almost always see a strong public media component. So, you know, to the extent that there are going to be new digital taxes, which I think could be appropriate, I want to see them go into funding public media, you know, non advertising supported media, you know, rather than propping up, you know, Fox News. Do you think here they're doing enough, the country, the government is doing enough to support public media? Or do you think it's something that we need more of? No, I mean, Republicans think, you know, public media is communism. And, you know, it's just sort of like on a long list of things that Congress, you know, will occasionally shout about, but doesn't take any meaningful action on. I mean, you know, the government's entire approach to social media regulation for the past four years has been, we will bring CEOs in front of, you know, a hearing or more recently on Zoom. We will ask them extremely angry questions to humiliate them, and then we'll interrupt them before they can answer. And then we will share the clips on social media for fundraising purposes, and then we'll never pass a law. So I think that is not a good way to run a country. Pivoting a little bit to the kind of the tech stack of the independent journalist. I'm going to put independent in air quotes here now, because looking at sub stack and some of the pro deals and what they're doing paying publishers, that's pretty close to not completely crossing the line into an editorial position. Whereas I think earlier on, they were taking the role of simply kind of the infrastructure to be able to provide that. How do you see that playing out in terms of what happens with sub stack in the next two, three, four years, as if they're, are they going to have to make a firm decision if they want to be a publisher, or if they want to be the nuts and bolts of any other publisher? I mean, they'll have a million decisions to make. I find the question of like, are you a publisher or a platform, like sort of tedious? Like I think it's a relatively meaningless distinction. Like sub stack is a business that they're going to succeed to the extent that they can get writers on the platform, get them selling subscriptions and then taking a cut of it. So I think sub stack is going to do whatever it can to ensure that that happens. And I think it's good that they're offering some people advances. I did not take an advance from them. But you look at the diversity problem that we have in media. And you look at how risk averse most journalists are for very good reasons. It only makes sense that you would want to reach out to a group of people who are maybe underrepresented in media and say, Hey, we'll give you $100,000 upfront. You can leave your job. You can have a year plus of runway to build something. And if it's successful, which we think it will be, then everybody wins. I actually think that's a much better approach than a lot of the grants that I see given out by foundations, which it's like you read about these new local initiatives one time on the press release when they're announced, and then you never hear about them again. I think sub stack is actually trying to find people that it thinks is going to succeed and then sets them up where they can. But then ultimately it's only going to keep working if they can find an audience. I think that's a much more sustainable model than a lot of what we see out there. I like their approach when they were very clear and even in sub stacks press release was very clear, very direct. This is this is not charitable giving. This is a business decision. We're looking at the journalists even particularly specifically within the local news initiative that they have going was what what journalists can be sustainable. What is this going to help just seed and accelerate to get to the point that they can build up that audience and have sustainability to pay for the journalism to be done. I really like that. Thinking from the corporate media perspective, does the power of corporate media pose a serious threat to our democracy? Is it too late to rectify the damage that's already been done? I mean, it sounds like this person has a very strong opinion about what corporate media is doing to democracy. I mean, do I think Fox News is a threat to democracy? Yes. I mean, you know, you have millions of people are having their brains poisoned every night by people telling them that, you know, a wave of people who don't look like them are setting out to replace them. So yeah, I mean, I think Fox News has been absolutely horrible for democracy, you know, but I'm also somebody who believes in the First Amendment. And again, one reason why I would support more public media is that I think that you want to have counterweights to profit-driven media, right? Like you want to have people who can come in and tell stories to an audience of people who are just curious and who don't rely on, you know, these sort of like fear tactics in order to pad their profits. I'm thinking to the counterweight of that and on the public media side and also what we see a lot of where that opportunity to build trust is at that local level and showing up and doing the kind of shoe leather reporting. I think that's a great opportunity as well. So I'm really excited by kind of your ideas that the independent, the solo journalist can make it sustainably at the local level. What other advice might you give somebody considering going into that and knowing now also in this landscape more and more journalists losing their jobs who might say, hey, this is the best opportunity. I can start making some money and support myself while reporting on the news. What are some tips and advice you might give that person? I mean, you know, one thing I would say is just you don't have to go all in on this, right? Like my recommendation to every single journalist is to have an email list that you are collecting subscriptions to over time. You do not even have to send out a newsletter once a month if you don't want, but find friends, find sources, find industry people who care about what you're doing, gather their email addresses and then just email them on a semi regular basis and say, here is what I've been working on because that is going to be such a powerful tool that you have in your pocket. You know, as reporters, I think we over rely on Twitter. We think too much about our Twitter followers. Twitter followers are great, but they can only be used for a handful of things. An email address is an incredibly powerful thing. And if you're a journalist, you should go ahead and start collecting it. And one reason is, let's say you do get laid off from your job. And let's say you have 500 email subscribers, then you can take those emails to a place like Substack or somewhere else. And you can, you can start a newsletter, you know, maybe you send that out once or twice a week now instead of once every two months. You can turn on subscriptions and you should just assume that you're not going to make what you were making at your last job. But maybe you're making enough so that it takes care of what, what would have been one freelance assignment for you or two freelance assignments for you. And you now have a predictable floor of income that you can use as you figure out, you know, what, what other things you're going to do to make up the rest of it. So I think it's just this really powerful supplementary tool. And, but of course the beauty of it is that unlike a freelance assignment, you don't have to pitch anything to your paid newsletter, right? You just do the stuff that you think is interesting and that your subscribers think are interesting. And along the way, hopefully you're going to be building up some expertise and something. And when you do get the next opportunity to an interview for a job, people say, what have you been up to as a freelance? So you could say, well, I started this newsletter and here's so many subscribers it has. And here's how, you know, I broke these stories on this beat. So it's just such a cool way that is not going all in that will I think just kind of open up opportunities for you. What are some other things that person should be thinking about beyond, so email being the I think top tool in your toolbox. It sounds like not overlying on Twitter. What are some other things from editorial support or legal support or other things that they may be used to that are going to be completely new for them on a world on their own? Yeah, I mean, so, I mean, there's a place where I don't have great answers, right? Like, I'm currently writing mostly without an editor. I am a contributing editor at the Vert still. And so my old editor there does still edit some of my pieces. So that's a very helpful resource that I have that, you know, others might not, you know, legal stuff. Substack has a program where, you know, they basically we basically have like an agreement, you know, that if I get sued by a contentious billionaire that they'll step in to protect me, you know, that's also something that your most freelancers would have. So, you know, I think like, I respect the question. And yet, like I will say that I find that journalists have actually become so risk-averse here that they actually fail to see the opportunity. Like, you know, I sort of hear this undercurrent in your questions of like, just give me enough reasons why I shouldn't do this so that I could just kind of go back to my job and not think about this anymore. And I think that we should spend more time thinking about what the real opportunity here is. There are tens of thousands of people who are already paying for newsletters. I think there are going to be more of them in five years than they are today. And they could be subscribing to your newsletter. And if they do, you're going to have so much more of a sustainable job than you do right now. So, yes, there are things to be figured out. But man, if you can nail this thing, not even in a big way, there's just going to be so much more opportunity for you than where you are now. Great. So I think we're getting close on time here. Is there one thing you wish you knew when you started that would have made it even easier to ramp up? Or that might have encouraged you to start even sooner? Sure. What would have encouraged me? I don't know if anything necessarily would have encouraged me to start sooner. I've been thinking about it for a while and just kind of needed, I think, to like gather my courage to go through it. The main thing I would just say is when you become an entrepreneur, you're just constantly filling out forms. Every day, somebody's emailing you a new form, either you have to sign it, you have to figure out how you're going to sign a PDF. And then the form gets sent back to you because you filled out a box wrong. And so you have to build in time into your week just to fill out forms. So that's probably my least favorite part of being an entrepreneur and something I'd have on your radar as you make this switch. Well, if I may make the flip to a little positive side, what's the best part about being an entrepreneur? Making more money than I used to. But not only just making more money, but it's like knowing that it's nothing but upside ahead, right? Like I'm in a world now where when I write, when I break news, my readers give me a raise. That's an incredibly powerful thing that I wish more journalists could feel. I used to spend so much time staring at a chart, you know, dashboard, wondering how many people were reading my story. And now I look at a dashboard that shows me how many more people are supporting me based on the news that I've broken. That is a super cool dynamic. And I hope more journalists get to experience it. Amazing. Amazing. Thank you so much as we're wrapping up here. One last question. Where can people find you? How can they keep up with Platformer in the day to day that you're reporting on? Sure. We'll say you can sign up at platformer.news. You don't have to pay me. I'll still send you one free reported story every week. And of course, you can also subscribe. And then we can be in touch four times a week. And you can join a side channel, this cool community of independent journalists and readers that I'm building. And then I'm also on Twitter at KC Newton. You can find me there. Awesome. Well, thanks to everyone for tuning in today. Thank you, Casey, for joining us here on Informed and Engaged. To everyone, let's keep the conversation going about ideas and solutions supporting the future of local journalism with independent journalists. You can tweet to us and at hashtag Night Live. And you can always find me at John Belgrade on Twitter. Next week on Night Live, join Senior Director of Arts, Coven Smith, for another episode of Discovery Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern. And that's all for today. Thanks for joining us.