The Addition’s Charlotte Henry looks at some examples of creators who have been lured back to publications, and how publishers can reap the rewards of allowing their talented staff to lead with their personalities.
As readers will know, there are some changes coming to Media Voices. It means that ‘Lessons from the creator economy’ is coming to an end. (Sorry, you’re not getting rid of me entirely – more on that at another point.) To wrap things up, I wanted to reflect on the topic I started off with, something that has remained a theme over these last few months – the differences and similarities between creators and journalists.
Back in February, the media was reeling from a variety of closures and redundancy rounds. That story has hardly improved as the year has gone on. It makes striking out on your own all the more tempting. Why wait to lose your job when you can create your own? It may even be necessary, if the publisher you work for has shut down.
Happily, The Publisher Newsletter Awards ceremony last week made it clear how strong independent newsletters are. Many beat products from established and illustrious brands. This includes in the Best Entertainment and Culture Newsletter category that I helped judge, where comedy newsletter LMAOnaise by Zoe Paskett deservedly walked away with the prize.
I also wrote in February that “whichever way you look at it, the lines between creator and journalist are getting ever blurrier and this means there are huge opportunities for individual journalists.” That remains true, but it’s not necessarily only about people starting a YouTube channel, podcast or newsletter of their own and trying to sell ads and subscriptions. We’ve also seen brands bring independent newsletter creators back into the fold.
Perhaps the most notable example of that is Charlie Warzel. His popular ‘Galaxy Brain’ newsletter that he launched after leaving The New York Times was incorporated into The Atlantic in November 2021. A year later he was announced as a staff writer on the magazine. The newsletter still exists too. Announcing his move to The Atlantic, Warzel said that “over seven months on Substack… I made considerably less than I did working at the Times (this will be the line people quote, I guarantee, if they quote anything from this post).” He wasn’t wrong about that!
Allowing staff to shine
Similarly, publications have got in on the rush to create newsletters and the writers already on staff have become stars in their own right. Political journalist Stephen Bush, who has had newsletters at The Telegraph, New Statesman and now the Financial Times is a name that jumps immediately to mind.
His FT colleague Claer Barrett is another star. Unlike Bush and many others on the paper, she does not write a daily, weekly or even monthly newsletter. ‘Sort Your Financial Life Out with Claer Barrett’, named Best Health and Lifestyle Newsletter last week, is actually a six-week long course. It is free for FT subscribers and £19 for civilians. The writer said that she “basically disappeared from the office for about three weeks in total, and stayed away from anybody who might ask me to do any more work,” whilst putting it all together. The effort seems to have paid off as the course has proven to be immensely popular, with around 10,000 people taking it.
It shows the value of journalists being creators and intrapreneurs – building something within a pre-existing company. It helps both the individual journalist and the publication. “The FT gives me a platform, or authority from which to speak,” explains Barrett. The paper itself gets the benefit of being home to a successful course and Barrett appearing regularly on various broadcast outlets, directly and indirectly promoting her employer.
As Barrett puts it, “we may get the benefit of my wider following coming to the newspaper. I mean, I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that I am a prominent woman talking about finance and investing. And I get asked to go on a lot of shows, because it’s really important that we do not see investing as something that women somehow either don’t or can’t participate in.”
These opportunities do not just come to journalists diligently cracking out copy in the corner of the newsroom.
It ties into her activity on social media too. Barrett has picked up 23,000 followers on Instagram, posting content about a variety of personal finance topics. She also fronts Money Clinic with Claer Barrett, a multi award-winning podcast where she responds to real-life money questions from millennial guests. Ultimately the newsletter leveraged all of this – Barrett’s brand from social and broadcast media combined with the FT’s brand – to be a success.
With this in mind, are we going to see more from ‘Sort Your Financial Life Out’? Disappointingly, it doesn’t seem like Barrett is going to be teaming up with Stacey Dooley for the finance version of ‘Sort Your Life Out’. However, “we did a big update after the Conservative budget, so we will almost certainly do another big update after the Labour budget which will be in October,” she explains. “We absolutely want to continue the franchise.” As for making it a weekly or monthly product? “You might have to clone me.”
The Financial Times is probably not going to clone one of its journalists. However, it and other publishers would do well consider how they can better allow talent to operate like creators and build products withing the structure of an existing company.
