Before June 8 Skilled and respected news TV reporter Terry Moran is neither a household name flash. This changed suddenly when Moran posted on X that Donald Trump’s chief of staff Stephen Miller was “a world-class hater,” followed by the president and a hater. (The post was later removed.) While the statement is certainly a defense, it was clearly a violation of ABC policy, Moran was suspended and then dismissed. Moran moved left. On June 11, he began writing on alternative books.
Moran joins a dream-based campaign: journalists can launch alternative newsletters and receive subscription fees to meet or exceed their previous salary. They will be liberated on the editorial! When advertisers complain, when you say the president of the United States is a hater, there is no editor to screw up copying, no boss censorship, no company overlords can fire you. Alternatively, some people are indeed realizing their dreams. CEO Chris Best recently boasted in a speech that “more than 50 users” made $1 million.
As more journalists are kicked out of work, tired of their bosses, or just want to breathe in a cool atmosphere of freedom, they now seem to have a viable escape hatch. Lately, many of them have been taking advantage of it. Jeff Bezos is a good replacement: The Washington Post editorial page recently for stopping democracy from dying people, which has led to popular opinion writer Jennifer Rubin publishing a publication called “The Counter-Trend People” and reviewing the review’s editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes is now also published on the alternative. Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hassan started his own publication. Even Chuck Todd left independence.
You might be tempted to think that the alternative revolution is shaking the foundations of news, agreeing with the alternative star Emily Sundberg that newsroom leaders everywhere should ban their doors to prevent further defections. OK, not that fast. Alternative models may work well for a few, but it is not easy to get into and match your salary. Readers must pay a high price for the sounds they once liked in publications they subscribe to. Writers must be accustomed to the idea that the breadth of their wisdom is limited to a small number of customers. Are alternative sustainable writers speaking to the average audience?
Just over the last week or so, a group of critics have been posting that the platform might be on the shaky ground. It began with Eric Newcomer (in his own successful alternative) getting a recent influx of big names, and reported that the platform told investors that it earns $45 million in revenue each year. He claims it is seeking a new investment round that will put the company in a $700 million value. (Replace these numbers are not confirmed.)
But then, Parker’s Dylan Byers looked at the numbers and wondered if the bottom line valuation was actually less than the previous round. Like other critics, Byers accuses the platform of low-level mediocrity once you go beyond a few real big earners: “The fact is that the vast majority of content on the alternative aspect is boring, amateur, or Batshit madness,” he wrote. He concluded that the alternative was a media company, trying to be named a technology company, a familiar failure point for similar companies. (For this reason, the connection itself once failed on the IPO.)
Ana Marie Cox once loved wonkette’s blog reputation and was even cruel, writing in a newsletter that replaced “as unstable as SpaceX launches.” Her recent influx of name writers has not been impressed. “How many Terry Morrans have room for alternatives?” she wrote. “There is even a public appetite for a dozen Terry Morans, each independent Terry Moran-ing in their own newsletter?”
Cox refers to subscription fatigue, which is what pops up every time I sign up page opens up a new alternative. Typically, a monthly fee of $5-10 or a monthly fee of $50-150 per year for alternative professionals. Usually, there is a free content, but hopes to make at least a portion of your livelihood journalists save good things for paid clients in terms of alternatives. This is a terrible value proposition compared to subscribing to a full publication. After leaving the Atlantic Ocean, renowned writer Derek Thompson started a replacement that costs $80 a year, a penny more than the digital subscription to the magazine he just left! (The Atlantic could cost $300,000 to replace him with someone worth reading.) The situation that matches the cost of The New York Times isn’t too many subscriptions, which could have 100 journalists as good as alternative writers, and you can launch the startup.
