Taylor Lorenz, the high-profile tech columnist for The Washington Post, said on Tuesday that she was leaving the publication to start her own subscription newsletter on Substack.
Her newsletter, “User Mag,” will continue her reporting on internet culture and the creator economy, covering “who has power on the internet and how that power is being wielded,” she said in an introduction post.
Ms. Lorenz said in an interview that she would keep hosting the Vox Media podcast “Power User” and that she would now be free to do collaborations with other content creators and take up opportunities she wasn’t able to do at The Post.
“I want to be able to publish whatever I want, whenever I want, and I want to get the upside of breaking news,” she said.
Ms. Lorenz was a technology reporter for The New York Times from 2019 to 2022. She previously worked at outlets including The Daily Beast, The Atlantic and Business Insider and wrote the best-selling book, “Extremely Online,” which chronicled the rise of power and fame on the internet.
She has been the focus of criticism on social media in recent years. In 2022, she posted on Twitter, now known as X, that a miscommunication with her editor at The Post had led to an inaccurate line in an article. Those tweets were discussed and agreed on by Ms. Lorenz and editors before she posted them, but they prompted an outcry from online critics who accused her of passing the buck.
In August, Ms. Lorenz posted an image on her Instagram Stories that appeared to call President Biden a “war criminal.” She later explained that it was a reference to a meme and that it should not be taken seriously. The Post said at the time that Ms. Lorenz had violated its social-media guidelines, which instruct Post journalists not to share partisan political opinions.
A Post spokeswoman, in an emailed statement, said: “We are grateful for the work Taylor has produced at The Washington Post. She has resigned to pursue a career in independent journalism, and we wish her the best.”
Her departure was first reported by The Hollywood Reporter.
Ms. Lorenz is the latest in a series of journalists leaving legacy media institutions in recent years to strike out on their own. In August, the CNN media writer Oliver Darcy departed to start Status, a media subscription newsletter. Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim, both from The Intercept, started Drop Site News. Last year, a group of journalists formerly of Vice’s Motherboard started 404 Media.
The post Taylor Lorenz, Chronicler of Digital Culture, to Start Own Newsletter appeared first on New York Times.
