I am my own legal department: the promise and peril of “just go independent”
Independent publishing is one important facet of the media ecosystem, and while I love it, I know it is not the path for everyone.
When a major legacy news publication does something controversial, I sometimes hear my name. “Just go independent! Do what Molly White does.” You’ve probably seen it too: advice to staff writers to “just go independent” like Heather Cox Richardson, or Casey Newton, or those guys over at 404 Media. “Just do a Substack! It’s the future of journalism.”
When news broke yesterday that Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos had spiked the newspaper’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris, editor-at-large Robert Kagan resigned. Similar events transpired earlier this week at the Los Angeles Times, whose own billionaire owner nixed a Harris endorsement, prompting the resignation of the editor who drafted it. As staff members at those publications and elsewhere spoke out about their frustration and fury at the decisions by those who control their employers’ purse strings, the familiar refrain began. “Why don’t you just quit too? Just go independent.”
The day before the Washington Post news broke, bleary-eyed at 7am as I scanned through my email inbox before getting out of bed to make some coffee, a subject line caught my eye: “DMCA Takedown Notice”.
