Striking Out as an Independent Tech Journalist, with Casey Newton

And the future of social media platforms

by Li Jin and Nathan Baschez

October 15, 2020

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This week on Means of Creation we welcomed Casey Newton, founder and writer of Platformer News!

Casey has been a leading journalistic voices in Silicon Valley for over a decade, most recently writing a daily newsletter for The Verge. Casey covers topics around government intervention in Big Tech, content moderation, and the impacts of social media on society.

As discussed in our news roundup, Casey recently left The Verge to start his own publication called Platformer. We're big fans of his work and it’s clear that other people are as well — in just five days Platformer had amassed over 6,000 subscribers. Casey’s story is a perfect example of the passion economy playing out in real time.

In this interview, we talked to Casey about:

If he sees more journalists considering moving out of legacy media organizations
If Substack should offer additional benefits like healthcare and legal support
How he thinks about publishing daily vs working on longer pieces
The biggest issues for both traditional media and social media
What changed most about going independent
And more!