From the verified pool
Who We're Watching Right Now.
A rotating selection from our verified creator pool, updated weekly. Each pick reflects the depth of the ecosystem — not just its most familiar names.
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Casey Newton
Platformer
Technology
Newton left The Verge to build Platformer into one of the most closely-read newsletters in tech — breaking stories institutional outlets follow up on. Proof that the byline isn't the credential anymore. The work is.
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Jessica Valenti
Abortion, Every Day
Gender & Rights
Valenti launched Abortion, Every Day the week Roe fell and built it into the most closely-read independent newsletter on reproductive rights in the country — faster, more granular, and more trusted than any institutional outlet covering the same beat. The story found its reporter.
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Alicia Kennedy
From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy
Food & Culture
Kennedy turned food writing into moral and political inquiry — her newsletter on what we eat, why it matters, and who profits is essential reading in food media and well beyond it. Built a loyal paid subscriber base without a masthead behind her. The beat is bigger than the institution ever made it.
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Oliver Darcy
Status
Media
Darcy walked away from CNN's Reliable Sources to launch Status — now the definitive nightly briefing on media power, with 85,000 subscribers and a track record of scoops that institutions follow up on. Accountability journalism about the people who control the news.
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Kyla Scanlon
Kyla's Newsletter
Economics
Scanlon coined "vibecession" before economists would name it, wrote a NYT bestseller, and built a million-follower cross-platform operation explaining how money and markets actually work — to audiences who never thought economics was for them. Making the most important beat accessible is its own kind of journalism.
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Kahlil Greene
History Can't Hide
History & Culture
Greene built a million-follower operation making suppressed American history impossible to ignore — Emmy-nominated, Peabody-winning, and now a National Geographic docuseries. Yale-educated, first Black student body president, entirely independent. The credential is the audience, not the institution.
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Tim Mak
The Counteroffensive
International
NPR laid Mak off. He flew back to Kyiv alone, launched the first Substack dedicated to war correspondence, and built a team of seven journalists on the ground. Now 142,000 subscribers — Substack's largest international publication. The foreign bureau didn't disappear. It went independent.
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