The Absolutely free Press co-founder and CEO Bari Weiss (ideal) seated subsequent to social media producer Lucy Biggers on Thursday, December 8, 2022 during the company’s start. Photo credit rating: Andy Mills
Bari Weiss, the New York Moments columnist turned independent publication writer, has employed 10 total-time employees and over a dozen contractors to aid construct her new media organization, The Free of charge Push, Weiss instructed Axios in an job interview.
Why it matters: The success of Weiss’ Substack publication and podcast, both of those of which she introduced past calendar year just after leaving The New York Instances, demonstrates you will find an urge for food for protection that’s meant to rebuke common media goods.
- “I am responding to a demand, and I am expanding based on the hunger of the audience. And that starvation and appetite is just enormous. We’re at the really, incredibly commencing of what this could be,” Weiss claimed.
Driving the news: Weiss released The Totally free Press very last Thursday, four days ahead of agenda, to capitalize on the media coverage around her “Twitter Documents” reporting.
- In a lot less than a 7 days, The No cost Push has accrued extra than 105,000 followers on Twitter and its flagship e-newsletter has extra an added 25,000 free and paid subscribers.
- Weiss’ Twitter subsequent by itself has exploded in that time, increasing from far more than 500,000 followers to extra than 900,000 in significantly less than a week.
Weiss and her spouse, Nellie Bowles, a co-founder of The Totally free Press”and former New York Situations correspondent, have wasted no time supercharging progress.
- The business has previously started its initially compensated marketing and advertising marketing campaign, which contains digital promoting and posters in cities this sort of as Los Angeles, New York Metropolis and quickly Austin and San Fransisco. “Up till now, we haven’t expended a penny,” Weiss said.

Capture up swift: Weiss still left The New York Situations as an op-ed columnist in July 2020, arguing she had come to be a target of “a ‘new McCarthyism’ that has taken root at the paper of history.” Bowles still left The Periods soon immediately after in 2021.
- The pair designed The Totally free Push from their kitchen area table in Los Angeles.
By the figures: In January of 2021, Weiss introduced Widespread Perception, a e-newsletter on Substack which is considering that amassed in excess of 283,000 free and paid subscribers. (Frequent Perception has now been rebranded as The Cost-free Press.)
- Weiss reported her subscriber variety has much more than doubled considering that the starting of the year, to 283,000, she stated.
- Before this year, Weiss and Bowles raised a little spouse and children and pals funding round for The Cost-free Push. Weiss declined to share how a lot was elevated.
- Prior to that, the duo relied on membership earnings from Weiss’ publication, which expenditures $5 regular. (It now fees $8 month to month underneath The Free Push umbrella.)
- Last calendar year, Marketwatch described that Weiss produced above $800,000 from her newsletter by itself, which at the time experienced 14,000 paid subscribers. The newsletter has additional than double that selection of paid subscribers these days.
Of observe: Weiss’ publication and other Free Push electronic mail newsletters will continue to be sent applying Substack, which also supplied technical aid for The Totally free Push web-site.
Facts: Wanting ahead, Weiss designs to start a slate of newsletters and podcasts to accompany her very own, all less than the umbrella of The Free of charge Push.
- She’s hired various podcast producers, which include Andy Mills, previously a producer for The New York Times’ flagship podcast “The Day-to-day.” Much more audio series will be coming in the new yr, which includes a doable podcast discussion display and prolonged-form podcasts that will truly feel additional like documentaries, she stated.
- Weiss has presently begun to employ total-time writers, which include Olivia Reingold, who will address politics and culture, and Rupa Subramanya.
- People writers will join The Absolutely free Press’ existing slate of journalists, which features Bowles, as properly as Peter Savodnik, Emily Yoffe and Suzy Weiss of The New York Post.
- Various other unbiased writers, which includes Katherine Boyle, a standard husband or wife at Andreessen Horowitz, and writer and Substack writer Michael Shellenberger, are becoming a member of as regular columnists.
- In addition to newsletters and podcasts, Weiss explained The Totally free Press programs to start additional goods for compensated subscribers specially, these kinds of as subscriber-only activities and dialogue threads.
- Subscribers, Weiss said, will go on to be “at the coronary heart of our business,” even though Weiss reported she’s open up to checking out other varieties of profits like marketing and function sponsorships.
In between the strains: The Totally free Press joins a slew of news startups, like Semafor, Puck and Airmail, that have launched in modern many years as digital updates of the sort of timely, scoopy, voice-driven protection that print applied to supply.
- The Totally free Press’ web-site is meant to resemble previous-fashioned broadsheet newspapers, Weiss stated, and a bygone era of trustworthy, dogged reporting.
The massive photo: Weiss, along with other independent writers like Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald, are getting newfound notice with Elon Musk’s possession of Twitter.
- “I imagine there is certainly a large amount of folks in this country who are politically homeless, who sense like the previous labels — Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal — no for a longer period in shape them or no more time necessarily mean what they utilized to,” Weiss claimed.