Legum has a background in law, politics and journalism. He authors the newsletter which is delivered through Substack, a company which provides services to support subscription newsletters. He says his newsletter is about politics and power though he has covered many topics including corporate donations to politicians and Facebook's struggles with its advertising guidelines. He seeks out stories he thinks media outlets won't be covering and does a deep analysis, focusing on national issues. Legum's business model is to attract paying subscribers through delivering in-depth reporting while eschewing ad dollars, and the newsletter contains no advertising. In 2020, Popular Information was expanded by hiring a full-time research assistant.[2][1]
In 2020 the Online News Association gave Popular Information an award for excellence in journalism, saying the newsletter had reported extensively on online misinformation, particularly focusing on Facebook, and that its reports on several nationwide companies created positive changes in working conditions for their employees. Its investigative reporting exposed a pro-Trump network of Facebook pages operating out of Ukraine, which were promptly shut down by Facebook, and the newsletter's reports have been cited in numerous national and local news outlets. According to Online News Association, "Popular Information demonstrates that newsletters can do far more than summarize the news. They can be a powerful vehicle to create change."[5]
Judd Legum Wants to Fix News With a Newsletter
Download Zip: https://0domiqamtsu.blogspot.com/?qd=2vFHSd
In 2018, Legum announced he was leaving ThinkProgress to develop an independent newsletter, to be published through Substack.[9] Legum joins Matt Taibbi and Daniel Lavery as early participants in the company's publishing model.[9] Legum's newsletter, called "Popular Information", is Substack's first politically-focused publication. It launched July 23, 2018.[9][16]
That said, this seems like a prime example of climate disinformation with no accountability that I'm going to bring to the Terra.do community - this is absolutely horrific in a non-ending line of more and more horrific activity and news.
I was hopeful that Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief of the new global media startup Semafor, might speak to HEATED about the misleading Chevron ad atop the site\u2019s debut climate newsletter on Monday.
But when I contacted Smith on Monday night to ask for a conversation about the site\u2019s Chevron sponsorship, he declined, and directed me to a Semafor spokesperson. I sent a detailed request to said Semafor spokesperson on Tuesday morning about the sponsorship, and received no response by this newsletter\u2019s publication on Wednesday afternoon.
Co-founded by Smith and former Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smith (no relation), Semafor launched last week with the goal of \u201Creinventing the news story.\u201D The news story needs reinventing, they say, because people can no longer tell the difference between unbiased fact and opinion.
Chevron\u2019s first appearance in Semafor came atop the site\u2019s first climate change newsletter, published Monday. The fossil fuel company's message claimed it was \u201Cworking toward a lower carbon future.\u201D It then added:
And make no mistake: they refuse to engage. This newsletter has called out numerous news outlets for running fossil fuel company ads that mislead readers about climate change. Each time we call out a news outlet, we ask them to explain: why don\u2019t you consider these ads to be misleading? Why do you think these ads don\u2019t constitute misinformation?
We never, ever, get an answer. All we get is silence or defensiveness. When we asked Axios and POLITICO to defend their misleading fossil fuel ads, for example, each responded by vehemently defending the quality and independence of their climate reporting. It\u2019s an incredibly disingenuous response, and frankly an insult to the reason we ask the question. Never once has this newsletter implied that any publication\u2019s climate reporting was affected by the misleading fossil fuel ads. We just don\u2019t want to see your readers misled. Why don\u2019t you?
But if you\u2019re someone who works at Semafor or any of these outlets that runs misleading fossil fuel ads, I am begging you: stop getting mad at this newsletter for asking questions, and start getting mad at your newsroom leaders for not giving answers. I am not undermining trust in your news outlet by pointing out they are hiding from accountability. Your newsroom leaders are doing that on their own.
That House of Representatives report highlighted whistleblowers' concerns with the Trump Administration's "efforts to transfer sensitive nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia," and was tweeted on Thursday by Judd Legum, who runs the Popular Information newsletter.
Some Substack writers have sought to monetize through methods other than subscriptions. Delia Cai, who works as a growth editor at BuzzFeed for her day job, writes the newsletter Deez Links, offering a round-up of media news, commentary, and Q&As with professionals. The newsletter has more than 5,600 subscribers, and Cai intends to keep the product free for now. She has tried selling merchandise, but found it to be a difficult business (her Deez Links pins were held up in China for two months because of coronavirus).
With the wider industry in a period of crisis, Substack has entered into a new phase. The first phase, Best said, was to attract writers with existing audiences to move to Substack. Now Substack wants to bring on new voices. As for products like bundles, Best said it should be driven by writers, not the company itself.
Dan Oshinsky is an email strategy thought leader. I first came across his work through Not a Newsletter (which is, actually, kind of a newsletter). I consider it to be required reading for anyone working in email today.
Stickers were an experiment I tried for fun was creating Normcore merchandise. Just like starting the newsletter, I had no concrete plan for them - I wanted to see how the process worked and how much everything cost.
It\u2019s been about nine months since I started Normcore Tech, and four months since the last time I talked about revenue. So, I thought I\u2019d do a check-in about how I put together Normcore, how much money I\u2019m making as an indie newsletter, and how the quickly-shifting paid newsletter landscape has changed in the past year. Let\u2019s talk about how the newsletter gets made first, and then I\u2019ll go into financials.
I\u2019m always \u201Con\u201D in the sense that I\u2019m thinking about the newsletter, but it\u2019s not any different than when I used to write primarily blog posts: I love writing, thinking about ideas, and sharing those ideas in long-form. This was especially important to me during maternity leave, when I needed an outlet for my brain. The fact that I make money from it now is a very nice bonus.
The good news is that there is always something to write about. My week of brainstorming starts usually after I release the latest free newsletter, on Tuesday-ish. My main news source is Twitter, where I follow a lot of people in data, tech, news and on the fringes of those fields. I\u2019ll scroll through a couple times a day, which I\u2019m doing anyway, so it\u2019s not an extra cognitive load. My primary method of communication with myself across devices are Telegram, my favorite messaging platform, Google docs, where I start my drafts, and the Substack editor, where I paste them in once I\u2019m done.
This is both a lot and not a lot. From my personal perspective, it\u2019s more than I\u2019ve ever made writing in a year consistently, and I keep getting new subscribers, so I\u2019m pretty happy with it. What I also love is that people send me emails and tweets responding to the newsletters, either as a clarification of something I wrote, or confirmation, or news, so it\u2019s like a conversation I never would have had otherwise.
From the business perspective of a publication, it\u2019s a really tiny amount of money. The metric that\u2019s most important for a subscription business is monthly recurring revenue, and mine as of right now is hovering around $575, which is a nice supplement, but not really enough to be able to make writing newsletters a full-time thing 2ff7e9595c
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