Ryan Broderick has watched digital media companies flame out — beholden to a single source of funding or a fickle algorithm.
So in 2019, he decided to craft a backup plan, while still working as a tech reporter at BuzzFeed News. Broderick started a newsletter roundup of the web’s oddities with a pleasantly putrid name: Garbage Day, an ode to the trash and treasure of the internet (and a nod to a quotable line in the 1987 slasher film “Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2.“)
In 2020, Broderick was fired over allegations of plagiarism, which he disputes. Out on his own, he decided to turn his side project into his day job.
Today, Garbage Day is a real media company staffed by fellow veterans of 2010s digital media: head of research Adam Bumas came from encyclopedia Know Your Meme, managing editor Cates Holderness is the BuzzFeed blogger behind viral hit “The Dress.” The company recently added chief operating officer Lisa Tozzi, a veteran newsroom leader whose bona fides include top roles at Rolling Stone and BuzzFeed News, and more than a decade editing at the New York Times.
The newsletter has more than 5,100 paying subscribers at $5 a month alongside a free audience of more than 100,000 readers, while advertisers pay roughly $1,000 to $2,000 per placement. Broderick’s podcast, “Panic World,” draws nearly 2,500 Patreon supporters and a consulting arm, Garbage Day Media Intelligence, has already brought in $100,000 in 2026. All told, Garbage Day brought in close to half a million dollars last year and is on track to beat that in 2026, with Broderick setting his sights on $1 million in revenue.
Broderick is part of a growing cohort of independent creators finding financial stability outside of large media companies and beyond the reach of any single platform’s algorithm.
As media organizations shed staff and audiences grow more skeptical of institutions, a growing number of journalists are finding an unlikely refuge in the newsletter.
In recent years, prominent writers and media personalities have migrated from traditional newsrooms toward newsletters: former MSNBC anchor Mehdi Hasan now runs Zeteo on Substack; tech journalist Casey Newton, formerly of the Verge, has Platformer on Ghost; former CNN reporter Oliver Darcy runs Status on beehiv, and former BuzzFeed culture writer Anne Helen Petersen authors Culture Study on Patreon.
Newsletters are built on a tried and true delivery method — email, which Broderick calls a “50-year-old technology that breaks down on a good day.” But, he said, it’s the best we’ve got: “In a world of algorithms, email is kind of last man standing.”
In a digital landscape increasingly crowded with artificial intelligence-generated content, many readers appear willing to pay for something harder to automate: a trusted voice delivered straight to their inbox.
“The writers who will last are the ones offering what AI can’t fake,” said Jeremy Caplan, director of teaching and learning at of CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and the founder of the tech newsletter Wonder Tools. “They have visible curiosity, expertise based on years of work or lived experience, and some fire behind their reporting, or their point of view.”
Substack, the most prominent newsletter platform, said the top 10 of its 50,000 publishers collectively earn more than $40 million a year. In politics and news, more than 30 publications clear $1 million annually.
Beehiiv, which launched in 2021 billing itself as a scrappier alternative to Substack, grew its revenue 80 percent in 2025 to $27.5 million.
Email is “the last place on the web that you get to decide who you let into your space,” said Dan Oshinsky, former director of newsletters at BuzzFeed and the New Yorker who runs a consultancy called Inbox Collective.
Absent algorithms, email is a place where people get messages from those they know and brands they trust. “ When I log into Gmail, Gmail isn’t saying, ‘Oh, Dan, we noticed that you like this newsletter soccer. Good news, here’s four others that we think you’d like as well,’” he said.
Jessica Maddox, an associate professor of entertainment and media studies at the University of Georgia, said newsletters are a source of stability because the reader has specifically opted in. “Algorithms can change on a whim and audiences can never be certain they’ll see exactly what they want,” she said. “Newsletter platforms change that.”
Like Broderick, many creators are using their newsletter as the main hub for a larger business, peppering in podcasts, events, merchandise and more. “Build an audience and then you get to do whatever the heck you want afterward,” Oshinsky said.
The creator economy rewards patience, and few have been more patient than Beth Silvers and Sarah Stewart Holland, who started recording the podcast “Pantsuit Politics” in 2015 from their bedroom closets, after their kids went to bed. For 11 years they’ve tried to leave listeners “empowered, not anxious” — a task they admit has only gotten harder.
It didn’t take long to realize they had something. When Apple featured the show early as “new and noteworthy,” Silvers called that “the ballgame.” They went from one episode a week to two in early 2016, then quit their day jobs — Silvers left a top human resources job at a law firm in 2017; Holland, a social media consultant, served on the Paducah, Kentucky, city commission until 2018.
Today “Pantsuit Politics” grosses roughly $1 million a year, with about 70 percent coming straight from readers who subscribe on Substack and the rest from ads, live events and speaking. Twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays, Silvers and Holland show up in podcast feeds to explain the news, how they feel about it, even how they’re talking to their kids about tough topics. Every episode ends with something that has nothing to do with politics — a book, a show, a small thing worth paying attention to.
The draw is community. They receive hundreds of holiday cards a year from listeners who’ve been with them a decade. Holland likens their role to “ministers” for a congregation.
Silvers agreed, recalling several young gay men, rejected by their families, who reached out early on. “They called me their internet mom,” she said, “because they liked hearing someone who sounded a lot like their mom — a normal Southern accent, just a normal person who goes to church and has a lot of the values they were raised with, but accepts them.”
That connection, Silvers said, is why retention runs so high. “It’s about us. It’s not about the news cycle.” The podcast has 3,800 paying subscribers and stays deliberately lean — no office, no marketing budget.
“If we were on Shark Tank, Mark Cuban would say we don’t have a business,” she said. “We have jobs that pay for themselves” — six figures each, and a company profit of around $90,000 to $100,000 a year.
Caplan, the CUNY professor, agreed that the dynamics of subscribing to individual creators is different than paying a big brand. “Paying $8 a month to a person you read every week, and whose cat you’ve seen, and who might even reply to your email, feels like giving a thumbs-up to someone you like,” he said.
“It’s easier for readers to relate to an independent journalist than to a faceless news organization. People trust institutions less and less. They suspect large ones are owned by billionaires or corporate giants. Writers they subscribe to, on the other hand, send a friendly welcome email with emojis. They may share video posts from a breakfast table or their home office. They seem more human.”
Olivia Wickstrom didn’t even know what Substack was in January 2025. By January 2026, it was her full-time job.
A Californian living in Nice, France, Wickstrom had spent five years freelancing as a copywriter when she stumbled onto the platform. Simple listicles about cottagecore and cozy-living aesthetics quickly turned personal — a publication about life as an American in France, creative entrepreneurship, and what she calls “main character energy.” Today, Petal + Hearth has more than 23,000 subscribers and brings in about $56,000 a year.
She has parlayed the audience into a coaching business — 50 one-on-one clients with another 50 on a waiting list — pushing her annual revenue north of $80,000.
She’s careful not to oversell it. Before any real traction, she’d written more than 250 essays. “It’s not a get-rich-quick thing,” she said. “You have to have a passion for writing, especially in the beginning when no one reads your content.”
Each of these creators has had to decide where to plant a flag. “Pantsuit Politics” spent years on Patreon before moving to Substack in October 2024. “It felt like a bet-the-business move,” Silvers said. “The Substack audience is a really good audience for us — curious people, readers.”
Broderick went the other way, leaving Substack for beehiiv after growing uncomfortable with what he calls the platform’s tolerance for extremist content and anti-trans voices.
In a statement, Substack told The Post it’s “committed to the belief that free press and free speech are fundamental to a trustworthy media system” and maintains guidelines “designed to protect against extremes, including incitements to violence.”
Some of those who’ve made it sense the window narrowing. “It’s really hard to break into podcasting now — it’s so dominated by freaking celebrities,” Holland said. “With Substack there’s more opportunity, but it’s still really hard.”
“A lot of the people who are successful on Substack already established themselves in the media,” said Jennifer Grygiel, associate professor of communications at Syracuse University. “They have a brand that’s portable. A couple might make it and inspire others, but they’re the outliers.”
Silvers is candid about how precarious this job feels — even despite the success. “Financially, it feels like a crazy gamble every single year that this is what I do for my job,” she said. “And also an unbelievable gift that enough people are willing to pay for it, that I can do it again next year.”
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