Marquee journalists are the faces of many on-air media businesses. They deliver the news, in turn building relationships with the audiences that invite them into their homes. For countless budding anchors, it’s the ultimate goal.
Or at least, it was.
Audiences have elevated independent creators and influencers as sources of information to the top of podcast charts, helping the likes of Joe Rogan and Alex Cooper secure multimillion-dollar deals with Spotify and SiriusXM. News organizations, meanwhile, are experiencing dwindling ratings, flagging trust levels, plummeting traffic and making business decisions that run the gamut from consolidation to apparent appeals to a vindictive president.
It’s forced some of television’s most prominent on-air journalists who’ve left their anchor desks to turn themselves into businesses and rely directly on readers to support their work. While no journalist who spoke to TheWrap would share specific revenue totals, some have built enterprises that have allowed them to hire dozens of people — and unexpectedly learn the ropes of running a news outlet.
The industry shift reflects how audience habits have changed in an increasingly fragmented media market, opting for individuals over corporations in a watershed moment for the media monoculture. It also shows how the rise of independent platforms has continued throughout the 2020s, years after Substack’s initial boon, allowing talent who made their names through television to see the same early success that journalists like Casey Newton and Matthew Yglesias found on the platform.
“I have never seen this level of pressure on these companies, and obviously it’s trickling down to journalists,” said Katie Couric, the veteran TV anchor who now runs Katie Couric Media with her husband John Molner, managing a staff of nearly 40 people. “We’ve reached an inflection point where many journalists are going to find it just ethically compromising to work for these companies.”
From anchor chair to full-time producer
ABC News’ senior national correspondent Terry Moran seemingly lit his career up in flames when, just minutes after midnight on June 8, he posted a lengthy screed on X that labeled President Donald Trump and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller each a “world-class hater.” The network eventually suspended Moran before outright firing him, a move that would traditionally send such broadcast journalists into the wilderness.
But Moran had already spent some time thinking about a new wave of media, observing friends who’ve made platforms — and money — out of Substack and YouTube. Once a Substack producer called him and laid out how to get started on the website, Moran posted a video that said he planned to “get at the important work that we all have to do in this time of such trouble for our country.”
Within days, his subscriber count reached 90,000, with people eager to hear his takes on the Trump administration. The “stunning” figure helped Moran realize independence was the “media of tomorrow.”
“I picked a great time to get fired and a great way to get fired,” Moran told TheWrap. “I had an audience instantly, people who were galvanized by what happened.”
Moran now boasts over 115,000 subscribers after four months on Substack, and he keeps all of his content free for his subscribers, which represents a mix of paid and unpaid. He said he sees a pathway to his ABC News salary (reported to be at about $500,000) in “a couple of years,” though he said it could be sooner. He would not disclose a breakdown of the mix, but he said he’s been told that about 3% to 8% of someone’s subscribers are paid and that he’s “right in the middle of that.”
“So you can kind of do the math,” he said. (We did: 5.5% of Moran’s roughly 115,000 subscribers would be 6,325 subscribers. If they subscribe at Moran’s $5-a-month tier, he would gross about $341,550 a year after Substack’s 10% cut.)
Part of the success came from audiences’ frustration with the Trump administration’s attacks on the media, which has led some media companies to settle lawsuits deemed dubious by experts or shift programming through actions like appointing an ombudsman with conservative roots or hiring a center-right opinion journalist with no experience in television to lead a broadcast news division.
Former CNN anchor Jim Acosta has seen similar success, although he spent much less time navigating the independent space after reportedly leaving CNN in January over the network’s plans to move him to a midnight time slot. He didn’t even have a personal laptop.
Within hours of his final show, he spoke to Substack’s head of news and politics, Catherine Valentine, and uploaded his first video on the platform. Since his January debut, he has gained more than 310,000 subscribers, with tens of thousands of them being paid subscribers despite his content mainly living outside of a paywall.
Acosta, too, would not say whether his revenue totals have reached his CNN salary, but he said he’s managed to hire a former producer from his CNN show and plans to announce more hires “soon.”
“I would not be doing this right now if it were not successful,” he said. “I would be figuring out a way to do something else. But this is doing quite well, so I’m going to continue to pursue it.”
Acosta said his decision to put most of his content outside a paywall reflects the national turmoil affecting the country, a time he said where “the lights are blinking red for our democracy.” He said he didn’t want to appear as though he was “grifting off the moment,” instead providing audiences with reporting that reflects what he sees as threats to democracy in the U.S.
“A huge part of this is a lot of public frustration with corporate media, and just seeing what they’re doing is just not sufficient, not doing enough to hold [Trump’s] feet to the fire,” he said. “So folks are going to gravitate towards these new platforms and say, ‘Aha, see, this is what I want. I want to see folks holding him accountable and not holding back.’ And I think that’s part of the reason why you’ve seen this part of the industry flourish.”
Talent-turned-executives
Some journalists have tried to let their own success take a backseat, opting to use their platform to build a full-scale media business.
MSNBC anchor Mehdi Hasan announced in January 2024 that he would leave the progressive network instead of remaining as an on-air commentator after it canceled his show, opting instead to “look for a new challenge.”
That challenge came a month later in Zeteo, a name derived from a Greek word meaning “to seek,” which he labeled a “movement for media accountability.” Hasan’s website has since grown into a business with 15 staffers, 12 newsletters and reporting often focused on coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict and the Trump administration. (He hired two reporters from Rolling Stone, Andrew Perez and Asawin Suebsaeng, last month.)
In nearly two years, Hasan said, he’s seen revenue in the “several millions” with more than 564,000 subscribers on Substack and 1.4 million YouTube subscribers. Hasan said 1,000 subscribers are considered “founding members” who pay $500 annually, amounting to $500,000, and roughly 50,000 paying subscribers overall, the majority of whom pay the annual rate of $84. It would mean he’s taking in at least $4.7 million in yearly revenue. He said all revenue he takes in comes from American subscribers or investors.
The business drew a small profit in its first year, and he plans to continue hiring. “We’re not just growing a business in a vacuum, right?” he told TheWrap. “We’re growing a business in a country where the free press is under assault, where the news cycle is insane on a daily basis.”
Former MSNBC star Joy Reid has also demonstrated an entrepreneurial spirit. After MSNBC fired Reid in February as part of a programming shuffle, she relied on her substantial social media following to build her nascent Substack into a media organization with her husband through their production company Image Lab, drawing hundreds of thousands of subscribers and scoring interviews with the likes of former Vice President Kamala Harris and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore.
“I did not miss a beat,” she said. “People were angry about me being kicked out of MSNBC, but they had a place to put that anger. They could still come and support me, and they did.”
Reid has leveraged that support into a media organization that has eight part-time staffers with the eventual goal of providing full-time salaries and health benefits. Her YouTube presence, launched in June, has amassed more than 330,000 subscribers and allows her to sell ads, a money stream that marks “the real way to build a business.” Reid would not provide specific revenue totals, but she said her company has operated “completely independently” without any debt and said her Substack is “already turning a profit.”
“We’re learning that we’re building the plane while we’re flying it,” she said. “But so far, I cannot complain.”
While Hasan has leaned into extracurricular appearances, including his role as columnist for the Guardian U.S. and his viral appearance last summer on Jubilee Media’s “Surrounded” debate series, Reid has found crossover episodes of her Substack show — like one on “No Kings Day” with Acosta and Don Lemon — to be “very successful.”
Appetite for independence
Audiences have long gravitated toward journalists who reflect values of honesty, intelligence and authenticity, even in the digital age, according to a Pew Research study published in August. But what defines authenticity remains a subject for debate, and several respondents to Pew’s study found they cared when journalists added “a human touch” to their reporting.
That’s what helps journalists on Substack grow the fastest, Valentine told TheWrap.
“What is actually making subscribers feel the most attached to people is this feeling like they can FaceTime with the person that they used to watch on cable news,” she told TheWrap. “It is leading to this authenticity thing. It’s this trust thing, and it’s feeling like you have an expert in your pocket thing, and that’s part of the magic that is not translating to legacy right now.
“Every time Jim Acosta’s dog barks, he makes money,” she added. (Acosta’s dog’s name is Duke.)
Those who bring an authentic feel to their news coverage on Substack tend to see the most success. Aaron Parnas, the 26-year-old whose Substack “The Parnas Perspective” ranks at the top of Substack’s news category (more than 615,000 subscribers, with tens of thousands of them paid) due to his prolific coverage of news events, left a past life as a lawyer to pursue his Substack full-time.
Parnas’ videos often feature him speaking into his phone, analyzing a news item in near real-time, though he’s also conducted interviews with top Democratic leaders who’ve recognized his platform. His relevance has emerged outside of the internet, as he helped kick off Harris’ book tour for her election memoir, “107 Days,” in New York last month.
“It means the world to me to be independent,” he told TheWrap, saying he draws between 80% to 90% of his income from Substack. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
The effects have been paramount through other platforms. Media reporter Oliver Darcy left CNN last year and turned an independent media newsletter, Status, into a full-fledged media company on Substack rival Beehiiv with multiple staffers focused on coverage of the media industry. Nearly all of Politico’s hires for its relaunch of its Playbook newsletter in 2021 — Eugene Daniels, Tara Palmeri, Ryan Lizza and Rachael Bade — have either started independent newsletters on Substack or reportedly plan to.
Couric, who started her independent media company in 2018 and launched on Substack earlier this year (more than 70,000 subscribers), said Substack revolutionized the incentive to go independent due to journalists’ ability to develop direct revenue streams, something not found on platforms like Twitter or Instagram.
“You can’t really make money on Instagram covering the news, right? You can make some money on YouTube, but not that much,” she said (and later clarified that YouTube remains a “good” revenue source). “Substack really opened the door to a lot of these independent journalists being able to support themselves.”
Not that all has been rosy on the platform. After the initial boom in 2020 that saw Substack help kickstart journalists’ independent projects with grants and resources, several writers decamped from the platform after Substack’s founders said they would not seek to demonetize Nazis who’d taken root.
Following an open letter from 200 writers, Substack announced in January last year that it would remove some of the publications it claimed were inciting violence. But some writers had already left.
“I went from making a little bit of money to actually making a living as an independent journalist with my own publication,” journalist Marisa Kebas wrote on her Beehiiv-hosted newsletter, “The Handbasket,” in December.
Substack no longer provides journalists with stipends. Still, of Substack’s roughly 50 millionaires on the platform, the “vast majority” are in the news and politics category, Valentine said.
“For most of these journalists, making a million dollars is more than they ever thought they could make in their careers,” she said. “Being able to go independent on their business also was not something radically on their plate, but they’re having so much fun.”
Substack reports that more than 50,000 publishers make money on the platform.
While some creators left this year after the Trump administration took hold, the model has still been successful for Substack. The company raised $100 million in 2025 at a $1.1 billion valuation, according to the New York Times. Investors included the technology investment firm BOND, sports agent and Klutch Sports Group CEO Rich Paul and venture capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz, among others.
The journalists who spoke to TheWrap said they did not want to return to their corporate platforms, noting that they value their independence and editorial freedom over the confines of a corporate media environment under immense duress.
“I don’t want to work at a place where those kinds of corporate pressures are just looming over me at all times,” Acosta said. “That’s why I’m enjoying what I’m doing right now. I’m free of all that, you know, until they figure out how to suppress this end of things.”
