Taylor Lorenz on leaving legacy media for the substantive, content creation

• Tech journalist Taylor Lorenz is going solo and launching her own publication, Substack.
• Lorenz announced her departure from The Washington Post this week for her own venture.
• She spoke to BI about the launch, monetization of the publication and plans to protect herself.

Tech journalist Taylor Lorenz goes into full creative mode, launching her own Substack publication called User Mag.

Lorenz has written about technology, politics, and digital culture for a variety of major publications, including The Atlantic, The New York Times, and, most recently, The Washington Post as a columnist.

Signs that Lorenz might strike out on her own had been evident for some time.

For years, she has worked at the intersection of the worlds of journalism and creatives. She has built up a sizable following on YouTube and TikTok and has a weekly podcast called Power User, which is part of the Vox Media podcast network.

Lorenz’s status as an internet personality came with benefits and drawbacks. Her connection to the creator economy helped her work in different formats and increased the reach of her journalistic output. But she has also frequently come under the scrutiny of the likes of Fox News and been the subject of online harassment.

Lorenz said he had been planning his departure from The Washington Post for months and that it was unrelated to the recent speech about a President Joe Biden meme he posted on Instagram six weeks ago.

“We are grateful for the work Taylor has produced at The Washington Post,” the Post’s PR said in a statement. “She has resigned to pursue a career in freelance journalism and we wish her the best.”

Lorenz is far from alone in her solo journey.

Other journalists who have left traditional media to launch their own Substack newsletters include startups and VC reporter Eric Newcomer, media reporter Simon Owens and political writer Matthew Yglesias. Yglesias recently told Peter Kafka, chief correspondent at Business Insider, that his Slow Boring newsletter grosses about $1.4 million a year.

We spoke with Lorenz about her decision to leave legacy media and launch her own solo venture. Here are edited portions of that conversation.

What did you do before you became a journalist?

I was doing temp jobs and working retail. This girl at one of my temp jobs said, “Oh, I’m on Tumblr all day. This is the best way to spend time because we have a lot of free time.” And so I said, “What’s Tumblr?” That was in 2009. It was night and day for me. I got on Tumblr and immediately started spending 16 hours, 18 hours a day on Tumblr. I’ve done a lot of Tumblrs about food and different topics of interest. A lot of my Tumblrs were referral based and I just became very obsessed with early virality and making things go viral. I also started blogging at that time. I really enjoyed being able to write anything I wanted on the internet.

For the first half of my career, I was blogging and writing on the side, then doing social media.

What was the tipping point for you that led to your decision to start your own thing?

Mark Seibel is one of the greatest journalists alive. He is an incredible editor and would always push me to do better. I learned so much from him. I was already thinking it’s not a long-term thing for me, but when Mark left (The Washington Post), I thought, if not now, when?

How did you prepare User Mag for launch?

I spent much of the summer talking to content creators and other freelance journalists and planning my business model. I also saved, making sure I had enough to get by. I hired someone to work on my branding and develop a brand identity and logo.

Launching in the fall seemed like the best time. I talked to a lot of people and at first I thought maybe I would wait until January. But people have told me that it’s not the best time to get memberships because people discount their memberships around the New Year.

Were there any particular people who inspired you or gave you advice on your decision?

I’m very inspired by Johnny Harris and Cleo Abram, Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day and 404 Media.

There have been many people who have moved on from Vox and done amazing things.

There’s also this whole group of YouTubers who think they do a really good job of covering the news or covering these right-wing figures in a very thoughtful and critical way. I really like J Aubrey on YouTube, Mina Le and Hasan Piker.

Kate Lindsay from Embedded also gave me lots of advice. I talked to dozens and dozens of people before making this move. We really asked everyone about their business models and what they wish they knew. I made a whole spreadsheet of the different ways I wanted to think about building my own brand.

Tips for journalists on growing their following?

It’s so crucial, not just from a trust point of view, because people are much more likely to trust someone they can know first-hand than a faceless brand, but also because it gives you a level of feedback and accountability .

There are really smart people who follow me who are incredibly interesting that I would never have heard of before. I think that helped me break some of the biggest stories in my career. People say, “Hey, I’m following you. I know how you will tell the story. I’m not just sending an email somewhere.” I encourage all journalists to build those direct relationships with their audience and cultivate their audience.

Beyond Substack, do you plan to post more content on TikTok and YouTube?

Substiva is the prime mover for everything. I think Substack does a lot more in terms of multimedia. It now hosts videos and I just participated in substack livestreaming where I am a beta tester. I think I’ll post videos and maybe do interactive live streams there too.

YouTube is the other platform I want to lean heavily on. I think TikTok will be banned so I don’t want to invest much until I know it will exist. YouTube is much more stable and I’ll always be an Instagram girl because I’m a millennial. I also like to try new platforms.

How do you plan to monetize User Mag beyond Substack subscribers?

I’m trying to make it all about subscription revenue, but it depends on how much subscription revenue I can get. I think you’re able to do more things when you’re subscription-based, and it’s a lot harder to do certain things when you’re advertising-based.

I’ll probably do some one-off gigs and things like that if opportunities arise. But I really want to try to get full subscription revenue, and if I can get enough of the subscription revenue, I can keep all my YouTube content free and keep my podcast completely free without a paywall.

What types of stories do you hope to cover in User Mag?

I will continue to do online cultural, business and political writing. But I’m really excited to do more serialized content. For example, we just launched this series on the moral panic surrounding children and technology. I really want to do a lot of these deep dives. I haven’t announced this yet, but I also do quarterly themed topics for User Mag.

Zoe Jensen helped me with User Mag and will appear as a contributor.

Do you feel constrained by the types of stories you wanted to cover at a traditional media organization?

One thing I loved about working in traditional media was brainstorming with some of the smartest people. I am devastated to no longer be working with Drew Harwell because he is just one of the most brilliant people. I literally came to The Washington Post to work with Drew because I’ve admired his work for years. So it’s people like that that I’m really going to miss having access to their minds on a daily basis.

I think legacy media comes with a lot of benefits and constraints. There should be, but for someone like me, I don’t know what my role would be, and I feel like it’s been a bit of a square in a round hole since I became a reporter. I’m a content creator. I’ve always been a content creator and I don’t know that these places are set up for that. I just want a lot more flexibility in terms of vocals.

You’ve been sued before. How are you going to handle the legal stuff now that you’re single? For many journalists, one of the biggest benefits of working for an established organization is having this kind of support and legal backing.

When Tucker Carlson and all these right-wing people were attacking me, the most stressful thing was managing my employer. Basically, you are not allowed to respond, which, by the way, leads to reputational damage.

If I were independent in the first place, I would be able to monetize all of this. I would lean very hard. I would probably do reaction videos. I don’t care what these people say.

I will say that The Washington Post has been so amazing in terms of the physical security it has provided. Really, shout out to them because I’ve faced a lot of physical security threats that they’ve handled very well, so it’s going to be annoying to solve them myself.

I think for those more controversial stories, I’ll have to find some kind of way to write with protection. I imagine if it’s a story that I think is going to be controversial at that level, I’ll probably work with an outside venue or maybe partner with an organization that has legal protection. This does not have to be a legacy organization. Some of these other new media outlets have more legal protection.

Right now, as an independent operator, I will rely on the help of my lawyer friends.

Are you going to build a team?

I’d love to get to the point where I don’t have to edit my own content. I would like to hire a video editor. This would probably be the next hire I would make, and I would also like someone to read the things I write before I post them.

Disclaimer: Lorenz previously worked at Business Insider and also highlighted the author’s reporting in her book Extremely Online.