Over the past year, some of the nation’s most prominent opinion writers have made the same calculation: they can reach readers and make money more effectively outside traditional newsrooms than within them. Jen Rubin, a longtime Washington Post columnist known for conservative criticism, left the Post in January 2025 to launch “The Contrarian” on Substack alongside attorney Norm Eisen, charging $7 monthly for premium access to columns, podcasts, and videos. Her departure followed a broader pattern of high-profile exits that reveals a fundamental shift in how opinion journalism works—and who profits from it. This trend is not isolated to one newsroom or one writer’s personal circumstances.
It reflects structural changes in media economics, shifts in editorial control, and the growing viability of direct-to-reader publishing. Writers like Mehdi Hasan, who launched the progressive news outlet Zeteo in April 2024 after his MSNBC talk show was cancelled, have invested millions to build independent operations. Meanwhile, journalists at British institutions like The Times and The Guardian have quietly moved to newsletters. The exodus represents a challenge to the traditional media hierarchy—and offers a case study in what happens when writers decide they can do better on their own.
Table of Contents
- Why Major Opinion Writers Are Leaving Traditional Newsrooms
- The Financial Potential of Independent Publishing
- Substack, Direct-to-Reader Models, and Platform Dynamics
- The Challenge of Building and Sustaining an Independent Audience
- Editorial Independence as Both Promise and Trap
- Success Stories Across Different Models
- The Shifting Landscape of Opinion and Journalism
- Conclusion
Why Major Opinion Writers Are Leaving Traditional Newsrooms
The departures accelerated during a period of intense upheaval at major papers. At The Washington Post, editor-in-chief Will Lewis and owner Jeff Bezos declared a new editorial direction focused on “personal liberties and free markets.” This prompted David Shipley, the longtime opinions editor, to resign in early 2025—a stark signal that the outlet’s approach to opinion journalism was fundamentally shifting. When Bezos killed a planned endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris just weeks before the 2024 election, the newsroom’s discord became public, and over 300,000 readers cancelled their subscriptions within days. For writers like Rubin, who had built followings based on independent-minded commentary, the environment became untenable.
This wasn’t merely about politics or particular disagreements. Writers at traditional outlets operate within institutional constraints: editorial committees approve topics, ownership sets the tone, and columnists must align (or at least coexist) with the overall newsroom mission. Younger journalists and prominent commentators watching these dynamics recognized a fundamental problem: the outlets that employed them were undergoing ownership changes and strategic pivots that eroded their editorial autonomy. The risk wasn’t just uncomfortable meetings—it was the threat of being marginalized, overruled, or pushed out entirely. Substack, newsletters, and independent platforms offered something newspapers couldn’t: unmediated access to readers and full control over content.
The Financial Potential of Independent Publishing
The money tells part of the story. Substack, which launched its paid subscription model in 2017, has grown into a significant income source for writers. As of April 2026, nearly 100,000 publications on Substack now earn money, up from 50,000 just a year earlier. Across the platform, writer revenue reached $450 million in 2025, compared to $370 million in 2024 and $300 million in 2023—growth that outpaces many traditional publishing houses. However, these aggregate numbers mask enormous variance.
The top earners are exceptional: at least four Substack newsletters generate over $1 million annually, including “Letters from an American,” “The Pragmatic Engineer,” “Lenny’s Newsletter,” and “Citrini Research.” The top 10 authors collectively earn approximately $40 million per year. But the median creator earns only about $4,000 annually, and only writers in the top quartile exceed $16,000 per year. For someone like Jen Rubin, who has an existing audience and platform, launching with premium subscriptions at $7 per month is a far more viable proposition than for an unknown writer. This financial reality is a crucial limitation: individual newsletter success depends almost entirely on existing notoriety. Most writers won’t replicate Rubin’s earnings.
Substack, Direct-to-Reader Models, and Platform Dynamics
Substack’s model is straightforward: writers retain 90 percent of subscription revenue after payment processing fees, with Substack taking 10 percent. For writers, this is dramatically more favorable than traditional publishing, where they typically receive a salary or modest per-article fee. Direct-to-reader publishing also offers the psychological appeal of owning the relationship with readers—no algorithm decides reach, no middleman controls distribution, and no corporate owner can suddenly revoke access. Approximately 30 percent of Substack writers come from journalism backgrounds, according to platform data.
Some, like Mehdi Hasan, have built entire newsrooms around their independent operations. Hasan’s Zeteo, which he launched after his television show cancellation, represents the higher end of this spectrum—a $4 million investment in creating a full-service news outlet with a left-wing perspective. Others, like David Aaronovitch and Henry Winter from The Times, simply shifted their column writing to individual Substack accounts. Jim Waterson, a journalist from The Guardian, took a different approach, launching “London Centric,” a local news site. These variations reflect the different strategies writers pursue: some build independent media companies, while others simply escape the institutional constraints of employment.
The Challenge of Building and Sustaining an Independent Audience
Leaving a major newspaper comes with real risks that raw earnings statistics don’t capture. For established writers like Rubin, the transition is smoother—they have existing readers who will follow them. But the ongoing business model is fragile. A columnist at The Washington Post or The Times reaches millions of readers as part of the outlet’s daily audience. An independent newsletter reaches only those who actively subscribe. This creates a constant tension: the writer must acquire new subscribers, retain existing ones, and produce content without institutional support. The infrastructure challenges are also significant.
A major newsroom provides editing, fact-checking, legal review, and technical support. An individual newsletter creator must either handle these tasks alone or hire contractors—expenses that cut into revenue. For opinion writing, this might seem minor, but for reporters doing original investigation, the costs become substantial, which is why Hasan’s Zeteo required multi-million-dollar backing. Additionally, there’s the practical question of sustainability. Substack’s payment infrastructure and discoverability tools are useful, but they’re not guaranteed to remain stable. The platform could change its terms, raise its fees, or shift its business model. Writers are ultimately dependent on Substack’s goodwill and continued operation.
Editorial Independence as Both Promise and Trap
The promise of independent publishing is complete editorial autonomy. A writer answerable only to their readers and their own conscience can cover topics, take positions, and maintain stances that institutional employment might complicate. For opinion writers, this is genuinely liberating. For reporters, it can create ethical problems: there’s no institutional editorial standards process, no peer review, no editorial board to catch errors or flag bias. This freedom comes with a tradeoff that fewer independent writers acknowledge.
Traditional newsrooms, for all their constraints, enforce standards: fact-checking, source verification, correction protocols, and accountability structures. An individual writer publishing directly to subscribers lacks this. The reader must essentially trust the writer’s integrity entirely. This matters more for news reporting than opinion—an opinion columnist’s bias is the point—but it remains a real limitation. Some of the most successful independent writers, like Hasan with Zeteo, have tried to address this by building teams and editorial processes. But this requires resources most writers don’t have, and it reintroduces the institutional overhead that prompted the exodus in the first place.
Success Stories Across Different Models
Jen Rubin’s transition to “The Contrarian” is ongoing, so long-term success remains uncertain, but she enters as an established voice with an existing following. Mehdi Hasan’s Zeteo has attracted prominent journalists and investors, positioning it as a more institutional independent outlet. These represent the high end of what’s possible. Further down the scale, hundreds of journalists have launched newsletters that generate modest but meaningful income—enough to subsidize freelance writing, provide supplementary income, or enable part-time work.
The British examples are instructive for different reasons. David Aaronovitch and Henry Winter didn’t abandon journalism or launch major ventures—they simply moved their columns to newsletter platforms, likely maintaining relationships with their publications while building independent subscriber bases. This hybrid model, where writers remain affiliated with traditional outlets but also cultivate direct relationships with readers, is increasingly common. It allows writers to hedge their bets: they retain the stability and audience of institutional employment while building an independent base that could become meaningful if circumstances shift. Jim Waterson’s London Centric demonstrates yet another model, where a journalist uses independent publishing to cover niches (London local news) that traditional outlets increasingly neglect.
The Shifting Landscape of Opinion and Journalism
The aggregate trend is clear: talented writers with existing platforms can now credibly exit traditional newsrooms and build sustainable independent operations. This is reshaping the media landscape. Publications lose experienced columnists and investigators to independent ventures. Readers increasingly encounter opinion and news through individual writers’ newsletters rather than mastheads. The one-directional flow of journalism—from institution to reader—is becoming bidirectional, with writers building direct relationships and institutions losing monopolies on distribution. This shift will likely accelerate.
As more writers prove financial viability, others will be emboldened to leave. Conversely, institutional ownership changes and editorial meddling will push more writers toward independence. The economics increasingly favor it: a writer with 10,000 paying subscribers at $10 monthly generates $120,000 annually—equivalent to or exceeding many mid-career newsroom salaries. For writers, the calculus is straightforward. For readers, the shift creates both opportunity (access to more diverse voices, direct communication with writers) and risk (less institutional quality control). The long-term implications remain unsettled, but the exodus is unmistakably underway.
Conclusion
Opinion writers are leaving traditional newsrooms for independent newsletters and Substack because the economic model, editorial control, and audience dynamics now favor direct-to-reader publishing—at least for those with existing platforms and followings. Jen Rubin’s launch of “The Contrarian,” Mehdi Hasan’s $4 million investment in Zeteo, and the quieter moves by Times and Guardian columnists reflect a genuine realignment in how opinion journalism functions. The financial incentives are real, though not uniformly distributed: top earners exceed a million dollars annually, while median independent writers earn around $4,000 per year. The trend has implications beyond individual writer careers.
It signals a loss of institutional editorial control and reach, a shift toward audience fragmentation, and the emergence of subscription-based media as a primary distribution channel. For readers seeking opinion and analysis, this landscape offers more choice and more direct access to writers—but also fewer gatekeepers and less institutional accountability. For the writers themselves, independence is simultaneously liberating and precarious. The next phase will determine whether this exodus represents a permanent restructuring of opinion media or a cyclical adjustment that resolves once newsrooms stabilize and adjust their own models.