Judd Legum proved that investigative journalism can thrive on Substack
The former ThinkProgress editor has over 150,000 signups and at least 7,500 paying subscribers to his newsletter.
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There’s this misconception about Substack that only opinion writers can thrive on its platform. According to this line of thinking, traditional journalism — the kind where reporters meet with and interview sources — is too time intensive and would prevent a writer from publishing at a high enough frequency to succeed.
Indeed, if you peruse the leaderboard for the most popular Substack accounts, you’ll find plenty that are long on analysis and short on original reporting. Articles about Substack tend to namecheck the same few pundits — Bari Weiss, Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Greenwald — who make their bread and butter by lobbing their highly partisan takes into the political discourse.
But to focus on just the most controversial writers is to miss the journalism that is sprouting up on the platform. As Substack matures as a company, it’s attracting more and more veteran journalists who are leveraging their reporting expertise and contacts to break news. Perhaps none have been more successful at this endeavor than Judd Legum.
Since launching his Substack newsletter Popular Information in 2018, Legum has not only broken dozens of major political and business stories, but his reporting has also driven real impact. Fortune 100 companies have been shamed into withdrawing their campaign spending. Media outlets with millions of social media followers saw their Facebook accounts deleted. Even Trump’s presidential campaign was forced to change its deceitful marketing as a result of Legum’s investigations.
And his readers have rewarded him for his success. Popular Information now gets sent out to over 150,000 subscribers, with at least 7,500 of them paying $50 a year to support his work. What’s particularly remarkable is that, since 2020, he hasn’t placed any content behind a paywall, which means he’s generating a six-figure income simply from the goodwill he’s generated.
I recently interviewed Legum about why he launched his newsletter, how he developed his investigative techniques, and whether he ever wants to hire a news team to increase Popular Information’s reach and impact.
Let’s jump into my findings…
Why he launched a newsletter
Legum didn’t start on Substack as an unknown entity. Back in 2005, he was working as a research director at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress when he pitched his bosses on launching a blog. ThinkProgress debuted that year with just him and two other staffers at the helm, but it quickly grew into one of the most influential blogs on the Left.