Amidst a Crumbling Media Industry, the Journalist-In-Your-Inbox Model Shows Promise

When, in late January, the Trump administration attempted to implement a widespread freeze on federal loans and grants, first news of the pause didn’t come from a legacy paper like The New York Times or even the Beltway reporters over at Politico. Instead, independent journalist Marisa Kabas, creator of the newsletter The Handbasket, was first to report on the later-rescinded Office of Management and Budget memo detailing the freeze by posting it to her Bluesky account. Following her scoop, which she secured thanks to an anonymous source, The Handbasket has brought in more readers and money.

“In the past month, I’ve more than doubled my total subscribers, [and] more than doubled my total paid subscribers,” she said. The increased interest in The Handbasket “has made it clear that people are looking for different types of news sources.”

And Kabas is not the only one beating the mainstream press to the punch. Journalist Ken Klippenstein, who co-founded KLIPNEWS on Substack in 2024, was first to report on a  directive from a Pentagon agency ordering a pause on observances of Black History Month and other cultural events. According to Klippenstein, he only got credit for his reporting in an Associated Press write up of the news after explicitly requesting it from the wire service’s reporter. 

With reporters running their own email and web newsletters landing scoops that can rival those appearing in the pages of The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, the first weeks of the Trump administration have highlighted that self-publishing independent journalists are now a force to reckon with in the media landscape.