Jeremy Arnold of Hunterbrook Media writes about how misleading ads for distressed companies are appearing in everything from blue-chip financial newsletters to The Wall Street Journal, calling into question their due diligence and adherence to disclosure obligations.
Arnold reports, “Few outlets count on this simple trust more than Morning Brew. A hotshot daily newsletter network with over 4 million claimed subscribers, its rapid rise led to an acquisition by publishing giant Axel Springer, parent company of both Politico and Business Insider. Hunterbrook’s analysis found that Morning Brew ran these crowdfunding ads in 165 editions of their flagship newsletter in 2025 alone. It also continued to run them regularly even after we approached for comment — to which we still have yet to receive a reply.
“But it wasn’t just them. We found dozens of concerning examples across newsletters from Sherwood News (operated by a subsidiary of investment company Robinhood), The Wall Street Journal, 1440 (over 4.6 million claimed subscribers), TLDR (1.6 million) and Tangle News (460,000).
“Tangle, an independent publication, provided Hunterbrook with a long and earnest response. Its founder affirmed that it did conduct both internal and referral-based due diligence. This doesn’t appear to have extended to comparing the provided ad copy to issuers’ disclosure documents. Tangle is reviewing its policies.
“Benzinga, which boasts about 25 million monthly readers, went even further with a promotional post, seemingly presented as its own independent research, that was mostly just the fundraising company’s marketing boilerplate. Exec Sum, a financial newsletter run by Twitter/X personality Litquidity, did the same for its more than 350,000 subscribers.”
Read more here.
