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Casey Newton
Born
Platformer
The safest first subscription if technology is your beat. Newton spent ten years covering Silicon Valley for The Verge, CNET and the San Francisco Chronicle before founding Platformer in 2020, and that decade of sources shows when platforms change their rules or AI companies reshuffle.
Its focus moves with the news, currently AI and its consequences, the politics and governance of technology and the changing social web. Paying adds at least one extra update a week, so the free edition is a fair sample of what you would get.
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Judd Legum
Born
Popular Information
Accountability reporting from the founder of ThinkProgress, arriving four mornings a week, Monday to Thursday, with no advertising. Legum's signature move is following the money: which companies say one thing in public and fund the opposite through political donations.
He is open about writing as a progressive, but the pitch is facts readers can use to form their own view, and it won the 2020 Online Journalism Award for excellence in newsletters. Choose it if you want reporting that names names rather than another hot take.
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Matt Taibbi
Born
Racket News
The pick for readers who distrust media consensus from any direction. After most of two decades at Rolling Stone, Taibbi built Racket around a mix of humorous commentary and investigative work, including his Twitter Files reporting, finance, congressional procedure and military contracting.
It costs $7 a month or $70 a year for roughly weekly dispatches. Expect sharp opinions alongside the documents; it suits readers who want a counterweight to mainstream coverage rather than a neutral wire service.
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Ken Klippenstein
Born
Ken Klippenstein's newsletter
For readers who want to know what the Pentagon, the FBI and the wider security apparatus are doing, rather than what officials say they are doing. A former DC correspondent for The Nation and reporter at The Intercept, Klippenstein went independent in 2024, co-founding his outlet with William M. Arkin.
His appetite for risk is the point and the caveat: soon after leaving, he published the hacked JD Vance dossier that major outlets had declined to run. If you want national security reporting that is openly sceptical of government sourcing, this is the one.
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Marisa Kabas
Born
The Handbasket
Scoops about American politics from a largely one-woman operation, with occasional guest writers. Kabas tags her work as exclusives, scoops, in-depth pieces and interviews, and the scoops are why people pay: in October 2026 she identified the man known as Tommy in a viral Abdul El-Sayed video as a former staffer for Senator Josh Hawley.
The outlook is plainly progressive, and recent subjects include Republican figures in the run-up to the 2026 midterms, capital punishment, and Israel and Gaza. A good pick for readers who want small, specific, checkable stories rather than broad analysis.
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Chris Geidner
Law Dork
The clearest way to follow the courts without a law degree, written by someone who has one. Geidner practised law in Ohio before journalism and was legal editor and Supreme Court correspondent at BuzzFeed News, so his reporting reads filings and rulings rather than press releases about them.
Coverage runs from the Supreme Court and legal challenges to the Trump administration to immigration, criminal justice, LGBTQ rights and abortion law after Roe. Pick it when a ruling lands and you want to know what it actually changes.
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Emily Atkin
HEATED
Climate coverage that asks who is responsible rather than how bad things are. Atkin covered climate change at ThinkProgress and then as a staff writer at The New Republic from 2017 to 2019 before starting HEATED, which bills itself as accountability journalism for the climate crisis.
The weekly issue chases the companies, lobbyists and politicians behind inaction, which makes it a useful complement to science-led climate newsletters. It is angry by design, so it suits readers who share the urgency more than those looking for a neutral explainer.
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Stephen Totilo
Game File
The games newsletter for people who care about who makes games and how the business works, not just what is coming out. Totilo has covered the beat for about 20 years: first video game reporter at MTV News, nine years as Kotaku's editor-in-chief, then building Axios's games coverage.
Paid subscribers get three newsletters a week for $10 a month or $100 a year; the free tier gets one. That free issue is enough for casual players, while anyone who follows the industry's business closely will want the full run.
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Taylor Lorenz
User Mag
Internet culture reported from the users' side. Lorenz was a technology columnist at The Washington Post and a technology reporter for The New York Times and The Atlantic; User Mag documents the people and movements that shape the internet rather than earnings calls and boardroom fights.
Choose it for creators, influencers and online subcultures rather than the companies hosting them. It is mostly written by Lorenz herself, so the voice is consistent, and her strong opinions are part of the package.
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Tara Palmeri
Born
The Red Letter
Washington and power-broker scoops from a reporter who has worked the beat from several angles: Page Six at the New York Post, Brussels and Playbook at Politico, White House correspondent for ABC News and senior political correspondent at Puck. Palmeri started The Red Letter, with no outside funders, as the home for her scoops, interviews and longer reporting.
The weekly flagship is the core; paying adds blind items, power rankings and breaking scoops by email. Pick it if you like political reporting about the people behind decisions, and enjoy a dose of gossip with it.
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Jim Waterson
London Centric
Proof that independent reporting can work locally. Waterson quit as the Guardian's media editor, after an earlier spell as BuzzFeed's political editor, to report on the people, decisions and money London runs on.
It has won the Orwell Prize for Reporting Homelessness, for exposing the attempted eviction of hundreds of Londoners, and was runner-up for another Orwell Prize for investigating fake stories on social platforms. Londoners get reporting about their own city's money and power; everyone else gets a model of what a city newsletter can be. Waterson edits rather than writes it alone, so expect several bylines.
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Seymour Hersh
Born
Seymour Hersh's newsletter
A reader-supported outlet for the reporter who exposed the My Lai massacre, winning a Pulitzer as a freelancer, and later revealed US torture at Abu Ghraib. His Substack made headlines in February 2023 with a story claiming the United States destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines.
That story shows both the appeal and the risk. It rested on a single anonymous source, and Washington and Oslo both rejected it. Subscribe for a veteran investigator still chasing secrets, and weigh each claim by its sourcing rather than by his reputation.
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Catherine Herridge
Born
Catherine Herridge Reports
Investigations into government misconduct from an Emmy-winning former CBS News correspondent who went independent to tell the stories she says she could not tell before. Her work sorts into investigations, short need-to-know pieces and debriefs, covering military benefits, court cases and public health.
After CBS News laid her off in 2024, the network held on to her reporting files until pressure from her union and a House committee got them returned, and that fight gives her particular appeal for readers on the right and anyone sceptical of network news. Some posts are reserved for paying subscribers and donors.
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