I’ve repeatedly read that happy people think happy thoughts, and I’m struggling to put that wisdom into practice. As an avid reader of news, it’s a formidable challenge remaining positive following the sorry presidential candidates Americans must choose from come November, and the legacy media’s pervasive dishonesty, particularly in its coverage of Donald Trump, keeps me in a constant state of agitation. Just prior to writing this post, I read this article about CNN being forced to apologize for using digitally altered photos of Donald Trump and the right wing activist Laura Loomer.
There is so much to criticize about Loomer, whose recent comments about Kamala Harris were even deemed “appalling and extremely racist” by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who isn’t known for her enlightened or progressive views. Yet CNN managed to sully itself yet again, providing another reminder about why the network’s ratings are in the toilet despite this being an election year.
The legacy media’s Olivia Nuzzi disgrace, which I posted about earlier this week, continues to make news. Nuzzi is the 31-year-old hotshot political writer who was sexting and sending provocative photos to Robert Kennedy Jr., who a friend of the pol says wasn’t interested in her messages and photos. I noted that Nuzzi was engaged to Politico writer Ryan Lizza, who years ago was fired from the New Yorker amid allegations of sexual misconduct.
Lizza and Nuzzi have reportedly cancelled their nuptials. According to the Federalist’s Mark Hemingway, in his insightful commentary about how tawdry and unethical behavior among Beltway denizens possibly no longer matters, Lizza left his wife and two kids to be with Nuzzi. Hemingway’s commentary is worth a read, as it explains how many political journalists are as ethically compromised as the politicians they cover.
Rather than focus on the negative, let’s celebrate a mighty positive development in journalism, and a very lucrative one as well. I’m referring to the financial success of a publication called The Free Press co-founded by former New York Times reporter Bari Weiss, who I’ve previously speculated had become a millionaire according to my back-of-the-envelope calculations.
Math has never been my strong suit, so it’s hardly a surprise my financial estimate was off considerably.
Weiss’ journalism and financial success leaves me kvelling, a Yiddish word meaning filled with joy and one that I’m certain Weiss is familiar with. For those who enjoy reading about underdogs who prevail, particularly in a moribund industry overseen by flailing leaders who fail upwards, Weiss’ story is sure to inspire.
In July 2020, Weiss resigned from the New York Times, but she didn’t exit quietly. She wrote a damning letter to the publication’s publisher, which was deserving of a Pulitzer for commentary as it explained the Times’ undeniable reputational decline. Weiss’ resignation letter was a masterpiece, portions of which I’m delighted to re-post.
Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.
My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m “writing about the Jews again.” Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.
There are terms for all of this: unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge. I’m no legal expert. But I know that this is wrong.
I do not understand how you have allowed this kind of behavior to go on inside your company in full view of the paper’s entire staff and the public. And I certainly can’t square how you and other Times leaders have stood by while simultaneously praising me in private for my courage. Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery.
In 2022, Weiss co-founded a Substack newsletter called Common Sense, and later renamed it The Free Press, promoting the publication as a “free press for free people.” Weiss has not only attracted some of the best journalism names in the business, but also some of the most fearless.
One of Weiss’ contributors is Emily Yoffe, whose October 2019 investigation of the firing of former Los Angeles Times reporter Jonathan Kaiman led me to conclude that Kaiman was unfairly railroaded by a colleague and his former publication. Yoffe wrote her piece for Reason magazine when the #MeToo movement was at its peak and questioning sexual harassment allegations was considered journalism blasphemy.
Weiss’ sister, Suzy, wrote this story about Dr. David Sabatini, a researcher who was making progress finding a cure for cancer, but his career was sidelined because of allegations of sexual harassment that a reasonable person would find dubious after reading the article. The Free Press dared to publish this story maintaining that Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer convicted for the murder of George Floyd, was a scapegoat, not a murderer. This article called out how the New York Times and other legacy media fell for a racism scam.
When Uri Berliner, the award-winning NPR reporter who could no longer tolerate the bias and dishonesty of the broadcast outlet where he toiled for 25 years, he chose to air his grievances in the Free Press, a publication he’s since joined.
There’s clearly a market for the intrepid brand of journalism for which the Free Press has become known. In April, Weiss shared that the publication had more than 630,000 subscribers, making it the No. 1 publication on the Substack platform, which caters to more discerning readers, many of whom are pleased to financially support writers they trust and respect.
In August, the New York Times reported the Free Press’ circulation had swelled to more than 750,000. Earlier this week, Weiss shared with readers that the Free Press’ circulation had grown to more than 800,000 subscribers.
Some savvy billionaire investors have taken notice. The FT reported this week Weiss has raised another round of funding from investors, valuing the business at about $100 million as it positions itself for the next phase of growth. Weiss’ billionaire backers include venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and David Sacks, as well as British hedge fund founder Paul Marshall, who just acquired the UK’s Spectator magazine and reportedly is in the running to acquire the British broadsheet newspaper the Telegraph.
According to the FT, the Free Press has some 40 investors, none owning more than 3% of the company.
The Free Press’ explosive circulation growth is impressive and its $100 million valuation even more so. In April, Weiss disclosed that she had more than 25 full-time staffers and bureaus in Los Angeles and New York. Even if she quadrupled her staff since then, garnering a $100 million valuation on a journalism outfit that’s still in its infancy is extraordinary.
Compare Weiss’ Free Press to the Washington Post, a newspaper founded in 1877 and still often mistakenly associated with the quality journalism of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame. The Post was already going south when Amazon founder Jeff Bezos acquired the publication in 2013 for $250 million, but former editor Sally Buzbee drove it further into the ground when she joined three years ago from the Associated Press and pursued her woke vision for the publication.
“What I’m looking forward to is getting to know the (Post) staff and diving in and continuing that commitment to diversity and inclusiveness,” said Buzbee, the Post’s first female editor. “I think it is one of the highest priorities for every news organization going forward, and it is very much mine.”
Under Buzbee’s leadership, the Post reportedly lost 500,000 paying subscribers, about half its readership, and racked up more than $70 million in losses last year.
Buzbee was forced out in June, and I posted about the publication’s troubled state and the cast of characters contributing to its decline. Since then, the Post has suffered more embarrassments. The publication’s Israel coverage is openly hostile, which is understandable given that the Washington Free Beacon reported that at least six members of the Post’s foreign desk previously worked at Qatar-funded Al Jazeera.
Beltway politics were once the Post’s strong suit, but the Wall Street Journal one day after Buzbee’s ouster scooped the publication reporting on President Biden’s declining mental acuity. Adding insult to injury, the Journal poached Washington bureau chief Damian Paletta from the Post, and the Biden scoop was among his first major journalism initiatives.
The Post is rife with anti-Trump coverage and ad nauseum warnings that he’s a threat to democracy, much of which could be produced with AI. The spouse and frequent co-author of Washington Post columnist Max Boot, a particularly rabid anti Trumper who called America’s former president a Russian stooge, was recently charged with two felony counts of serving as an unregistered agent for South Korea.
The Post has more than 900 newsroom employees, many of whom have resisted changes to reverse the publication’s readership decline. Publisher Will Smith’s latest initiative to stabilize the post is rearranging the presentation of content on the Post’s homepage, which is akin to the captain of the Titanic rearranging the deck chairs to save the ship from sinking.
While Bezos can easily sustain the Post’s losses, it’s far from certain he’d want to continue shouldering what’s become the journalism equivalent of AOL when lesser billionaires can boast of their financial interest in a fast-growing and considerably more prestigious media outlet than Bezos’ rapidly fading publication. The Post was a vanity purchase, one that no longer reflects well on Bezos’ image.
Legacy media journalists aren’t celebrating Weiss’ success, and some have gleefully denigrated it. Here’s a taste of what Ana Marie Cox wrote about Weiss in the far-left New Republic.
By now, most of the very online (sic) are familiar with Weiss’s schtick. The intellectual dark-web doyenne presides over a lucrative media empire centered on The Free Press, technically the most popular newsletter on Substack with over 600,000 subscribers, upward of 77,000 of them paying at least $8 a month. That reach and income have allowed Weiss to run The Free Press as much more than a newsletter: It has a staff, columists (sic), podcasts—including a sympathetic platform for J.K. Rowling—and, naturally, events.
The brand forcefully represents itself as a forum for people and ideas that have passed their sell-by date in today’s more enlightened and politically sensitive times, or, as their About page puts it, “We focus on stories that are ignored or misconstrued in the service of an ideological narrative.” You can argue among yourselves whether Rowling has really found herself without other outlets to air her grievances—at The Free Press, this is as canonical as the whole of her Wizarding World.
To read Cox’s missive, one must scroll past TNR’s fundraising plea that says the publication “desperately” needs to raise $75,000 “to support our reporting on the damage Trump’s MAGA politics will bring to this country, and how we can fight for a better U.S. for everyone.”
The New York Times last month wrote this snarky and belittling profile of Weiss, misidentifying her as an “elite bicoastal lesbian” when Weiss has publicly said she is bi-sexual. If there’s one publication I expect 100% accurate references to a person’s sexual identity, it’s the New York Times!
One enlightening tidbit in the Times’ takedown was that Weiss openly muses what the Free Press will be worth in a few years. Despite all her talk about a “free press for free people,” I imagine a major media conglomerate will eventually buy Weiss’ interest in the Free Press and, as typically is the case, she’ll give a moving speech about how she’s more committed than ever to the publication, and then gradually disappear.
Even the saintliest people struggle to remain true to their ideals on their way to the bank.