Why tech journalist Newton launched a newsletter

Quentin Hardy interviewed tech journalist Casey Newton about his decision to launch a newsletter, called The Platformer, and become his own boss.

Here is an excerpt:

Quentin Hardy: You had a rising career in traditional journalism, but left to start your own thing. What was behind that move?

Casey Newton: It was 2020. COVID. I was living like a retiree, buying groceries twice a week and otherwise just staying inside my house. I’d wake up every day and write a newsletter for The Verge, but everything I loved about journalism had gone away. There was no more newsroom, no traveling for stories, no visiting company headquarters in New York. I was just waking up and sending emails.

And I’d always wondered what if I could make it on my own, build my own little mini independent thing.

QH: So, a little push and a little pull.

CN: 2020 felt like the right time. I had just turned 40. I had just hit 100,000 Twitter followers. My expenses were pretty cheap, and with my job at The Verge I was able to save some money, enough to have a go at this thing.

The final piece of it was, I was afraid that over the long run there was really no media company that I could guarantee would be sustainable to the point where I could be confident of spending an entire career there. I got excited about the idea of trying to create my own sustainable job. Honestly, if readers supported me that would be more sustainable than relying on some CEO to create a job for me. With a newsletter, in order to lose your job thousands of people have to fire you at the same time.

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