Bari Weiss reveals marketing strategy for buzzy new media startup

Bari Weiss, the New York Occasions columnist turned impartial e-newsletter author, has employed ten full-time workers and over a dozen contractors to assist construct her new media firm, The Free Press, Weiss informed Axios in an interview.

Why it issues: The success of Weiss’ Substack e-newsletter and podcast, each of which she launched final yr after leaving The New York Occasions, exhibits there’s an urge for food for protection that is meant to rebuke conventional media merchandise.

• “I am responding to a requirement, and I am increasing based mostly on the starvation of the viewers. And that starvation and urge for food is simply big. We’re on the very, very starting of what this might be,” Weiss stated.

Driving the information: Weiss launched The Free Press final Thursday, 4 days forward of schedule, to capitalize on the media protection round her “Twitter Information” reporting.

• In lower than per week, The Free Press has accrued greater than 105,000 followers on Twitter and its flagship e-newsletter has added an extra 25,000 free and paid subscribers.
• Weiss’ Twitter following itself has exploded in that point, rising from greater than 500,000 followers to greater than 900,000 in lower than per week.

Weiss and her spouse, Nellie Bowles, a co-founder of The Free Press”and former New York Occasions correspondent, have wasted no time supercharging progress.

• The corporate has already begun its first paid advertising marketing campaign, which incorporates digital promoting and posters in cities reminiscent of Los Angeles, New York Metropolis and shortly Austin and San Fransisco. “Up till now, we’ve not spent a penny,” Weiss stated.

Catch up fast: Weiss left The New York Occasions as an op-ed columnist in July 2020, arguing she had turn out to be a sufferer of “a ‘new McCarthyism’ that has taken root on the paper of document.” Bowles left The Occasions shortly after in 2021.

• The pair created The Free Press from their kitchen desk in Los Angeles.

By the numbers: In January of 2021, Weiss launched Frequent Sense, a e-newsletter on Substack that is since amassed over 283,000 free and paid subscribers. (Frequent Sense has now been rebranded as The Free Press.)

• Weiss stated her subscriber quantity has greater than doubled for the reason that starting of the yr, to 283,000, she stated.
• Earlier this yr, Weiss and Bowles raised a small household and pals funding spherical for The Free Press. Weiss declined to share how a lot was raised.
• Previous to that, the duo relied on subscription income from Weiss’ e-newsletter, which prices $5 month-to-month. (It now prices $8 month-to-month below The Free Press umbrella.)
• Final yr, Marketwatch reported that Weiss remodeled $800,000 from her e-newsletter alone, which on the time had 14,000 paid subscribers. The e-newsletter has greater than double that variety of paid subscribers at the moment.

Of word: Weiss’ e-newsletter and different Free Press e mail newsletters will proceed to be despatched utilizing Substack, which additionally supplied technical help for The Free Press web site.

Particulars: Wanting forward, Weiss plans to launch a slate of newsletters and podcasts to accompany her personal, all below the umbrella of The Free Press.

• She’s employed a number of podcast producers, together with Andy Mills, previously a producer for The New York Occasions’ flagship podcast “The Every day.” Extra audio collection shall be coming within the new yr, together with a potential podcast debate present and long-form podcasts that can really feel extra like documentaries, she stated.

• Weiss has already begun to rent full-time writers, together with Olivia Reingold, who will cowl politics and tradition, and Rupa Subramanya.
• These writers will be part of The Free Press’ present slate of journalists, which incorporates Bowles, in addition to Peter Savodnik, Emily Yoffe and Suzy Weiss of The New York Submit.
• A number of different impartial writers, together with Katherine Boyle, a common companion at Andreessen Horowitz, and creator and Substack author Michael Shellenberger, are becoming a member of as common columnists.
• Along with newsletters and podcasts, Weiss stated The Free Press plans to launch extra merchandise for paid subscribers particularly, reminiscent of subscriber-only occasions and dialogue threads.
• Subscribers, Weiss stated, will proceed to be “on the coronary heart of our enterprise,” though Weiss stated she’s open to exploring different types of income like promoting and occasion sponsorships.

Between the traces: The Free Press joins a slew of reports startups, together with Semafor, Puck and Airmail, which have launched lately as digital updates of the type of well timed, scoopy, voice-driven protection that print used to supply.

• The Free Press’ web site is supposed to resemble old style broadsheet newspapers, Weiss stated, and a bygone period of trustworthy, dogged reporting.

The massive image: Weiss, alongside different impartial writers like Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald, are gaining newfound consideration with Elon Musk’s possession of Twitter.

• “I believe there’s lots of people on this nation who’re politically homeless, who really feel just like the outdated labels — Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal — now not match them or now not imply what they used to,” Weiss stated.