This former Navy SEAL grew his defense newsletter to 39,000 subscribers
PLUS: The huge opportunity for paid podcasts
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This former Navy SEAL grew his defense newsletter to 39,000 subscribers
Sam Havelock launched SOFX, his newsletter “focused on global conflict and technology impacting the battlefield,” in 2014, but its genesis actually stems back several years before then to his time in Iraq, where he served as the deputy commander of special operations. It was there he started compiling a daily summary of intelligence that was blasted out to US military personnel both inside and outside Iraq. “There was this thirst for recent, relevant, extremely bulletized reporting,” he explained.
Havelock used a similar format when he launched SOFX, and today the newsletter is widely read within the government and by the top executives at all the major defense contractors. He now employs a team of 10 people, and by 2030 he hopes SOFX will be the most widely-consumed media outlet in its niche.
In a recent interview, Havelock explained his approach to news gathering, how he found his early audience, and why he doesn’t hire traditional journalists for his news team.
You can check out our interview below:
Want to be featured in an interview like this? Shoot me an email and tell me about your own media outlet.
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Why cable news stars are suddenly flocking to independent media
The New York Times reports that Chuck Todd is launching an independent media company that will mainly consist of a YouTube channel and podcast:
Mr. Todd said he was adjusting to the realities of digital entrepreneurship and full-time podcasting. Sound bites are out, Mr. Todd says. Longer interviews are in — because many officials want time to make their points with fuller context. The first episode of the podcast, “The Chuck ToddCast,” released Wednesday, has an interview with Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, and lasts about 45 minutes.
Todd is just one of several cable news stars that recently cast off to launch their own media outlets, and I’ve noticed that all the newly-independent journalists in this cohort have had no trouble attracting prominent guests for their shows. One would think it was the imprimatur of Meet the Press that lured Senators and high-level officials into sitting down for interviews, but in reality these people know they can get just as much reach — or more — by speaking to independent media personalities, and what's more, they often enjoy the more intimate, longform format that a podcast affords them.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence either that many of these former cable news hosts have only recently launched their independent outlets; the 2024 election was just a real eye opener for them that they could maintain continued relevance outside of a legacy media organization. After all, it was Trump’s longform podcast interviews that seemed to capture the cultural zeitgeist, much more so than his sit-downs on Fox News and elsewhere.
The diminishing returns for news curation
Variety published a good rundown of the massive overhaul at CBS Evening News that’s resulted in more longform reporting:
“On Mondays, people are talking about something that happened on ‘60 Minutes,’ and every night we’re trying to deliver that a few times in these stories,” [producer Bill Owens] says. Such efforts give rise to original content that isn’t available elsewhere and hasn’t already been hammered by cable pundits and the digirati. Such stuff might also have new life via TikTok or YouTube, and have appeal to a new group of people who have been turned off by incessant and dour reports of increasingly harsh weather, backsliding democracy and overseas war.
New curation has value, but that value diminishes more and more every year because it's incredibly cheap and easy to produce — especially as AI becomes more pervasive. The legacy news orgs that thrive in the coming years will be the ones that double down on original reporting that can't be found anywhere else. It's more expensive to produce, yes, but it's also highly differentiated. There's a reason that the legacy media outlets thriving today — the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Atlantic — are the ones that invested heavily in longform journalism.
Which news outlets will be the biggest beneficiaries of the new “Trump bump”?
Press Gazette reports that Vox saw a 450% increase in paid memberships after Trump’s inauguration:
Starting in April 2020 Vox let users show their support for its journalism via one-off donations. Last year it added a more formal membership scheme with some member-only content and quarterly Q&As with its journalists, and in January this year a dynamic paywall was added to the site (although certain stories “that we think need to be available to everyone as a public service” remain free to all).
This week ad-free podcasts have been added as a perk for paying members.
I'm on record as predicting there wouldn't be a "Trump bump" in media subscriptions, at least anything near what we saw during the first Trump administration. In my defense, I had assumed that we would mostly see a repeat of the first Trump term — where he said lots of crazy things but left most of the federal institutions intact. My thinking was that demoralized blue state liberals would mostly check out from the daily news cycle.
Of course that's not what happened; instead, Trump immediately went about dismantling the federal government and is in the process of sending the economy into a tailspin, hence why liberals are extremely interested in following the news.
I think the big question now is which outlets will be the biggest beneficiaries of the new Trump bump. Last time, it was mainly big mainstream media organizations like the NYT, Washington Post, and CNN. This time, I see much of the enthusiasm flowing toward smaller, more independent outlets like Vox and Wired (yes, I know the latter is owned by Conde Nast, but still). There's also just a lot more support for solo creators who struck off from their legacy media motherships and mostly landed on platforms like Substack. If there's one silver lining to this entire shitshow of an administration, it's that we're probably going to emerge from it with a more vibrant, independent press.
Some good longform journalism
Tumblr is the social network that won't die. Usage plummeted due to Yahoo's mismanagement of the platform, but various subcultures still congregate within it. It was acquired a few years ago by Automattic, the parent company of Wordpress, and since then it's been quietly repopulated by Zoomers looking for an escape from the larger, more-crowded platforms that dominate the web. [Business Insider]
When Graydon Carter took over Vanity Fair in 1992, his failure was all but assured. The staff was suspicious of him, he'd burned bridges in both New York and Hollywood during his previous role editing Spy, and he didn't even particularly like the magazine that much. But somehow over the next few years he managed to mold Vanity Fair so it fit his own style and tastes, and now he's known as one of the last great editors from an era when magazines ruled the media world. [New Yorker]
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