Business
Why TV News Anchors Like Joy Reid and Don Lemon Are Moving to Substack
Should Jim Acosta wear a tie?
For the last two months, since the former anchor quit his job at CNN, Mr. Acosta has been broadcasting online several times per week, usually from his dining room, using his iPhone. Often, he is troubleshooting in real time, far from the high-gloss desk and sophisticated cameras of his CNN set.
One question he faces is how many “frills” to add to his interviews with the likes of Pete Buttigieg, the former transportation secretary, or Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the top House Democrat.
“The magic here is not killing or messing with this organic nature of the show,” said Matt Hoye, Mr. Acosta’s newly hired executive producer and a 30-year veteran of CNN, who is leaning “no” on adding neckties but “yes” on graphics.
“The Jim Acosta Show” streams live on Substack, a platform that has recently cemented itself as a harbor for stranded television anchors.
In January, the start-up best known for email newsletters gave all users the ability to publish live video. Now it is home to a handful of cable stars marooned from their mainstream media jobs amid reshuffled lineups, salary cuts and other controversies. On Substack, where politics is the most popular and lucrative category, anti-Trump publishers have been performing particularly well.
Joy Reid began regularly posting to Substack in March, after her MSNBC show was canceled. On Friday, the former CNN anchor Don Lemon joined Substack after a year of livestreaming on YouTube. They join established chart-toppers, like Mehdi Hasan (the former MSNBC host) and Dan Rather (the onetime face of CBS News), along with various CNN expatriates: Norm Eisen, Jessica Yellin, Chris Cillizza, Elise Labott and Alisyn Camerota.
This new TV diaspora has one central proposition: The future of news is casual. Sometimes very casual. Anchors can lose their seats and still hold on to their star power, so long as they give modern audiences what they want. “What’s most important in my business now is authenticity,” as Fox News host-turned-YouTube star Megyn Kelly recently told The New York Times.
“Jim Acosta’s people do not really care if Jim Acosta is wearing pancake makeup or not,” said Molly Jong-Fast, who is both an MSNBC political analyst and a regular guest on Substack shows.
Last Wednesday, Mr. Acosta ended his 30-minute interview with Representative Jeffries by talking about college basketball. Then a small orange ball materialized in the host’s hand, delivered by his fetch-hungry beagle, Duke. His visible houseplants had been previously mocked on Fox News, to which Mr. Acosta soberly objected.
Last month, on his birthday weekend, Don Lemon used his YouTube channel to stream himself having breakfast and lunch — both lasted nearly an hour — and a party, during which he sang parts of Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” into a karaoke microphone.
“People don’t really care if they’re in a coat and tie on the north lawn of the White House or in an air-conditioned studio in 30 Rock,” said Jeff Zucker, former president of CNN and former boss to several of these now-independent journalists. “They just want to hang out and hear from someone they like and trust.”
Katie Couric, who started an independent media company in 2017, has found the accelerated decline of linear television “at times upsetting,” she said: “I used to anchor the ‘CBS Evening News’ and ‘The Today Show,’ and I’m doing Instagram Lives now.”
Today, however, with a few dozen employees and a newsletter nearing one million subscribers, she more often feels legacy media is “late to the party.” Broadcasting on social media is “authenticity on steroids,” said Ms. Couric, who recently paused shopping for an Oscar’s party dress to livestream a breaking-news discussion on Ukraine, parking herself on the couch of a fashion brand’s showroom, wearing no makeup, she pointed out.
Mr. Lemon, who was ousted by CNN in 2023, a few months after making remarks about Nikki Haley’s age that were widely viewed as sexist, said he was courted almost immediately by Substack. Instead he agreed in 2024 to bring a new show to X with Elon Musk as his first interview guest.
That interview grew tense, and when Mr. Musk subsequently canceled their $1.5 million deal, Mr. Lemon filed a lawsuit that is ongoing. (“It’s crazy that I am in litigation with the richest man in the world,” Mr. Lemon said, though he claimed to not think about it very often.)
In the meantime, Mr. Lemon grew his YouTube channel to more than 656,000 subscribers, uploading his own takes, “Lemon drops,” alongside interviews with the conservative podcaster Candace Owens and Representative Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat from Texas.
“At first, you’re frightened, like, ‘Oh no, I’m not on the big broadcast anymore,’” said Mr. Lemon, who initially recorded his YouTube videos from a pricey, professionally lit studio — “cable news lite,” he said — until he realized that the chatty bonus videos he filmed in his living room, with his barking dogs, were more positively received by subscribers.
“You don’t need all those things that you think you need,” he said.
In December, Mr. Lemon added a paid membership option to his YouTube channel, with options ranging from about $3 to $50 a month. A representative declined to disclose his membership numbers. But Mr. Lemon said the show is profitable, primarily through YouTube’s advertising revenue share. He also earns income through social media sponsorships and corporate speaking engagements that he said he wasn’t able to accept while working for CNN.
Ms. Reid, who lost her MSNBC slot about a month ago, is still experiencing the “strange disconnect” of life without a television schedule and team of producers, she said.
She is “just tired,” she said, and working through her next steps, Ms. Reid said in an interview: “What do I want to do? What am I good at? What can I do to contribute to the world?” For now, she has landed on writing about democracy to an audience of about 118,000.
Mr. Acosta, whose subscribers surged after he encouraged CNN viewers in his sign-off message to not “bow down to a tyrant,” now ranks among Substack’s top 20 publishers in politics. Catherine Valentine, who recruits and wrangles these political and television personalities for Substack now calls this the “Jim Acosta model.”
Among his 287,000 total readers, Mr. Acosta has more than 10,000 paid subscribers, though he too declined to provide any specific financial figures. When asked in early March if he was approaching the $1 million mark in annualized revenue, Mr. Acosta laughed: “Are you writing a story, like, look at all these greedy broadcast journalists cashing in?” (He also answered: “I’m getting there.”)
Mr. Acosta has also been exploring additional content partnerships, like a podcasting deal, to augment his Substack presence. But he still speaks about Substack with the reverence of a former college radio host experimenting with “garage rock” — or at least a “model submarine enthusiast,” he said.
“It feels like I’ve stumbled upon this really cool hobby that I wish I’d known about sooner, but I didn’t,” Mr. Acosta said. “And I don’t know if CNN would have allowed me to have a presence.” (One current CNN anchor, Jake Tapper, does use Substack, but more as a social media feed, reposting CNN clips.)
Some networks have tried to incorporate more of internet’s casual and chaotic offerings into their sleek lineups, as when ESPN acquired the freewheeling “Pat McAfee Show” or Fox News developed a show with “a signature podcast style” around Will Cain.
But many still place restrictions on their employees’ presence on platforms such as Substack, said Marc Paskin, a talent agent who represents journalists as co-head of news and broadcasting at United Talent Agency, where Mr. Lemon is a client.
“There has always been a fear of cannibalization of an audience,” Mr. Paskin said. “The truth of matter is that these things should be viewed as partners.”
Until 2026, Mr. Lemon still has a contract in place with CNN that limits his broadcasting opportunities with competitors. Will he return to television then? Maybe if someone made him a “great offer,” he said. But maybe not.
“The longer I do this, the more satisfying it becomes, the more profitable it becomes and I start loving it more,” he said. “I think the folks who are in legacy media now are going to have to figure out what we’re doing over here.”
In a high-stakes decision that will shape California’s economy for years, air officials late Friday approved a sweeping overhaul of the state’s signature climate program, cap-and-invest.
The 10-3 vote from the California Air Resources Board determines how aggressively the Golden State will curb planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions in the years ahead — and how billions of dollars in revenue will flow through communities, businesses and public programs statewide.
Cap-and-invest was nation-leading when it launched in 2013. The program forces major polluters to pay for their share of emissions by buying allowances at auctions or being granted them for free. It uses the revenue to fund public transit projects, wildfire prevention, affordable housing, clean energy, electric vehicles and safe drinking water.
The pollution limit — or cap — declines each year, reducing the total amount of emissions in the state and helping California reach its ambitious climate targets, including 100% carbon neutrality by 2045.
The Legislature voted last year to extend cap-and-invest through 2045. Officials at the Air Resources Board then spent the last several months drafting and revising the plan voted on this week, which received considerable feedback from oil and gas companies, environmental groups, lobbyists and lawmakers all jockeying for different priorities.
Some 200 people testified in person during the marathon two-day meeting preceding the vote, and the final proposal received more than 1,000 written comments.
Industry groups warned that capping emissions too much and too quickly would push refineries out of the state and drive up already soaring energy costs. But environmentalists and other stakeholders said giving too many concessions to fossil fuel interests would defeat the program’s purpose, which is to drive down emissions along a pathway consistent with what scientists say could preserve a recognizable climate.
The program was always planned to become stricter as the years unfolded, to give businesses more time to make the stronger reductions in their emissions.
Officials were under legal, market and budgetary pressure to pass a plan without delay, and also said it’s important for California to signal market certainty.
“It is no secret that climate policy is at a crossroads — under attack by an openly hostile and well-funded opposition and upended by global economic upheaval,” CARB chair Lauren Sanchez said during the meeting. “At a moment of uncertainty at the federal and international levels, California has the opportunity to lead with consistency.”
Among the key updates to the program are the removal of 118 million pollution permits, or allowances, from the market by 2030, and 900 million after 2030. Officials say this will amount to a steep, 11% annual lowering of the cap by the end of this decade, and 7% from 2031 to 2045, in keeping with the state’s mandated targets.
Critically, however, the update will also create a new pool of 118 million allowances above the cap that polluters can apply for and receive if they invest in decarbonization projects, a program dubbed the Manufacturing Decarbonization Incentive.
The incentive program is intended to discourage regulated industries from leaving the state. Two major refineries have announced exit plans in recent years, including Valero’s Benecia refinery and Phillips 66’s Los Angeles refinery, which shut down in 2025.
But many critics — including transit, affordable housing, environmental justice and clean water groups — said this amounts to a dismantling of the program.
“CARB has proposed creating exactly 118.3 million additional allowances … outside the cap, the precise number of allowances that must be removed from the cap to keep us on track for our 2030 targets,” said Caroline Jones, a senior analyst with the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund. “This undermines the cap’s role in actually limiting climate pollution, which is the core function of this program.”
The board approved the decarbonization incentive but committed to additional workshops and evaluations of the program before issuing any allowances for it.
Other updates include more free allowances for industrial facilities and refineries, which regulators said will help reduce pressure on gasoline prices. Critics described the free permits as subsidies for oil and gas.
The update will also shift some allowances from gas to electric utilities, and increase funding for the California Climate Credit, a rebate that appears automatically on people’s utility bills.
But perhaps most controversial is how the update will affect the program’s multibillion-dollar revenue, which flows into the state’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund each year and is distributed to various programs. Cap-and-invest has delivered $35 billion for climate projects in California since its inception.
The new incentive pool will mean the loss of $2 billion annually to the fund, or roughly half the amount it has received in recent years, according to an analysis from the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
While the Air Resources Board does not determine how the fund is divvied up — that’s the Legislature — opponents warned that this could amount to significant cuts for the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Program, the Low Carbon Transit Operations Program, the SAFER drinking water program and the Community Air Protection Program, among many others that rely on revenue from cap-and-invest.
“This could create serious consequences, including a potential zeroing out of the state’s support for critical emission reduction programs,” said Phillip Fine, executive officer at the Bay Area Air District. “Striking the right balance is critical, but all consequences must be fully considered.”
It was a sentiment echoed by many who delivered comments during the board meeting.
“These additional allowances would not only endanger our emissions targets, they would also flood the auction market and depress cap-and-invest revenues,” said Pam Odell of the group Climate Action California. “These revenues fund vital programs, promote climate resilience, clean transit and transportation, and public health, especially in the most heavily exposed front-line communities.”
Some groups came out in support of the update, however, including Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric. The plan strikes a “balance between program stringency and affordability,” Fariya Ali, air and climate policy manager with PG&E, said during the meeting.
Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin (D-Thousand Oaks), who authored the bill that reauthorized the program last year, was cautiously supportive, noting that she would like to see more guardrails around the incentive program to ensure it aligns with state climate targets. But delaying the update would only create more uncertainty at a time when the Trump administration is already canceling clean energy funds and revoking California’s authority to set clean vehicle standards, she said.
“If we fail now to adopt the proposed amendments to cap-and-invest, it would be without a doubt the greatest victory that the Trump administration could possibly hope for to achieve against California’s climate policies this year,” Irwin said.
Oil and gas groups were tepid. Jodie Muller, chief executive of the Western States Petroleum Assn., said the update provides some near-term relief for refineries, but leaves too much uncertainty after 2030 to drive continued investment.
Brian McDonald, regulatory affairs manager with Marathon Petroleum Corp., said similarly that the oil company is “deeply concerned that the current proposal does not go far enough to provide the regulatory certainty needed to sustain in-state fuel production.”
In a briefing ahead of the vote, California climate economist Danny Cullenward said the update threatens both the “cap” aspect of the program by introducing the new allowance pool, and the “invest” aspect by threatening to reduce the program’s revenues.
The proposal is “being presented as a compromise when in fact it is sacrificing both of the key goals of the program,” he said.
The new plan is slated to go into effect Sept. 1.
Layoffs have continued with another tech company saying it was cutting people to enable it to use more artificial intelligence.
Groupon announced in a security filing this month that it will cut up to 400 jobs, or nearly 25% of its worldwide workforce, as part of a broader restructuring plan to make the platform AI-native. The Chicago company plans to carry out the layoffs in the coming months.
Earlier the company’s Chief Executive Officer Dušan Šenkypl had said the company “fell short of our expectations” last quarter.
Since 2022, more than 800,000 tech workers have been laid off, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks job cuts.
The surge in pink slips started in 2023, when companies that had gone on hiring sprees during the COVID-19 pandemic began to cut back. From January to April this year, U.S. tech employers announced 85,411 job cuts, up 33% from the same period last year, according to global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Groupon said in the filing that the decision to shift toward an AI-based company is to “better deliver on our mission, serving both customers and merchants.”
The company said the layoffs will cost it as much as $13 million, but save it more than $20 million per year.
This announcement comes as many e-commerce companies are shifting their business models to AI to reduce costs by automating many roles.
Artificial intelligence has also triggered fierce competition for top talent and is also fueling tens of thousands of layoffs this year. The result is that the class divide is widening in Silicon Valley as a tiny group of employees are landing unprecedented packages for AI skills, while many others struggle to find work.
The have-nots are doing everything that used to guarantee great jobs — refreshing resumes, optimizing LinkedIn profiles and doing interviews — but companies are much more picky these days. The tech jobless are rethinking their lives. Some are taking pay cuts, while others are leaving tech. Some are going back to study or launch startups. Some have retired.
Groupon shares, which have fallen 27% over the last 12 months, slipped 1% on Thursday to $21.20.
Walt Disney Co.’s ABC has filed renewal applications with the Federal Communications Commission “under protest” after an order mandating a years-early review of the network’s eight television station licenses.
The criticism was part of the network’s applications for the FCC review, which were filed ahead of a deadline Thursday. In an objection to the early renewal, Disney’s New York station WABC called the FCC order “unlawful, arbitrary and unconstitutional” and said it was “legally indefensible.”
“The Commission had not demanded early renewal in over five decades,” the station wrote in its filing. “And it has never before demanded simultaneous license renewal applications from a group of stations commonly owned with a network as it has here. The order has no legitimate purpose.”
The licenses for the eight ABC-owned TV stations, including KABC in Los Angeles, were originally scheduled for renewal between 2028 and 2031.
The FCC order came shortly after ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about First Lady Melania Trump looking like an “expectant widow” days before a gunman tried to breach the White House Correspondents’ Assn. gala last month that President Trump attended.
Trump has frequently threatened to have TV station licenses pulled when he is unhappy with their coverage, but the order is the first time the government has acted on his wishes, sparking anger from free speech advocates. The FCC has said the order is part of an investigation into whether Disney’s diversity and inclusion policies violate federal law and the agency’s rules against “unlawful discrimination.”
In its response, WABC said the “only plausible reason” to issue the order was to “punish the station for speech the government does not like.”
“The ultimate injury here is not to the station or its parent company. It is to the public,” WABC wrote. “When a broadcaster must weigh regulatory retaliation before making editorial decisions, the public loses access to journalism that is free from government influence.”
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement Thursday that Disney filed its applications to renew its broadcast licenses only after the company was told its previous answers were “disingenuous, deficient and improper.”
“Contrary to Disney’s claim that the FCC called in their broadcast licenses for early renewal for no reason, the record shows something very different,” Carr said. “Broadcast licensees have a unique obligation to operate in the public interest. The FCC will follow the facts and law wherever they may lead.”
FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez, the panel’s only Democrat who has backed Disney in its fight, cheered the Burbank media and entertainment company’s filing, saying in a post on X that she was “glad to see them expose the FCC’s actions as nothing more than naked political retribution and an unlawful assault on free speech and a free press.”
Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.
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