Afterlife

At the start of this year, Condé Nast announced that Pitchfork would merge with GQ, and in the process laid off a dozen employees—or about half the publication’s staff. “Both Pitchfork and GQ have unique and valuable ways that they approach music journalism,” Anna Wintour, the chief content officer at Condé Nast, said in a staff memo at the time. 

Ryan Dombal, a longtime staffer at Pitchfork, contemplated leaving journalism entirely. He entertained the idea of a job in composting but—after attending a symposium at the Bronx Botanical Garden, where the focus was on how the city was committing no money to the practice—abandoned the plan. 

Luckily, it turned out journalism was still a little less bleak than composting. Vaughn Millette, an investor in the music business, soon approached Dombal about starting a music outlet. Over months of conversation with Millette and planning with Dombal’s fellow laid-off Pitchfork alums Andy Cush, Jill Mapes, Dylan Green, and Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, the group launched a new site, Hearing Things, in October. The decision to wrap Pitchfork into GQ was ironic, they felt, since the publication usually discovered the acts that GQ or Vogue covered later. 

“It’s been a real learning curve, because, you know, I was an editor—I wasn’t really a manager at Pitchfork. Now we’re kind of all managers,” Dombal said of the group, who collectively own Hearing Things, as in the worker-owned models of Defector and Hell Gate NYC. Though it may seem easier to monetize self-publishing with platforms like Substack, the group wanted Hearing Things to be its own independent site. This involved developing logos and site design. “There were some moments, very stressful moments before we launched, just like making sure everything was working,” Dombal said. 

To the owner-editors, however, the publishing freedom is worth it. They get to sidestep the Condé Nast Pitchfork-to-GQ/Vogue pipeline and the celebrity pop star industrial complex to write about the artists they want, however obscure––their email inboxes are piling up with listening requests. The site’s music review column “Must Hear” offers readers the chance to geek out about artists with cult followings like Atlanta rapper Sahbabii, Austrian ambient musician Fennesz, or cumbia singer Estevie. 

They are pulling the curtain back on the inner workings of the industry—the realities of having to tour with a family, say, or maneuver in a landscape where there is little discussion about the realm between commercial pop stardom and failure. “People really seem to resonate with putting these hardships up front, just being frank about it,” Dombal said. 

The group is toying with the idea of virtual listening sessions or classes in which they focus on a genre or era—the year 1967 in jazz, for example. So long as there is interest, the site is open to exploration. They are working to make Hearing Things last as long as possible and “be a place where music journalism can thrive and exist.”

When Taylor Lorenz started blogging, in 2009, she had to be independent. Earlier this year, she sought out that same independence, but for different reasons.

“It was impossible to monetize in any meaningful way back when I started. The only path that you had, if you were successful on the internet, was to go into media.” For her, that meant writing about the internet and online culture for a host of digital media publications, like Mic.com and BuzzFeed. “When that whole digital media ecosystem popped, I ended up going into traditional media.” Over the past seven years, Lorenz has held full-time roles reporting and writing about technology at the Daily Beast, The Atlantic, the New York Times, and, most recently, the Washington Post.

“But I always wanted to be completely independent,” Lorenz tells CJR. “A lot of times, throughout my time in the legacy media, it would be very, very, very hard to convince them that the stories that I wanted to write about the internet were important.” She adds: “I know every reporter feels like this to an extent, but I think it’s really hard with my beat. To people that have never really spent much time online, it can be hard to explain why people like the Nelk Boys or Mr. Beast will matter. Now it’s getting better, but four years ago, it was impossible.”

Plus, given the frequency with which she faces criticism online—as I write this, several articles and dozens of social media posts are dissecting her statements on the UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting—Lorenz says she wanted the freedom to respond in ways that she couldn’t while working full-time in traditional media outlets.

“Whether it’s Tucker Carlson ranting about me on the air or people screaming at me on Twitter, these media companies don’t know how to respond, and they often make you camp down and basically make you stay silent. And that creates this vacuum where bad-faith narratives thrive, and [it becomes] very hard to debunk that type of stuff. So I wanted to be able to speak for myself.”

In October, Lorenz left her role as a columnist at the Post and launched her own site on Substack called User Mag. It was a culmination of months of preparation. Over the summer, Lorenz spoke to dozens of journalists in both traditional and independent media to get their advice on developing a business plan. She considered different business models—and whether to take outside investments or not—and worked on getting the LLC set up and the branding done.

“I spent so many months getting my ducks in a row,” Lorenz says, “because I was very nervous about the launch. I wasn’t sure how it would go.” She even set up her first brand deal for User Mag far in advance—promotions for Bloomberg’s Screentime conference. “I made sure that I had money coming in months before doing anything.”

In the weeks since User Mag launched, Lorenz says, the response has been terrific. Her goal of reaching 100,000 subscribers by 2026 seems comfortably on track—User Mag has crossed half that number in less than three months. “This is the best decision I ever made,” Lorenz says. “I wish I did it sooner. I was so scared, because I started independent, and I remember how hard it was back in the early 2010s. Now the internet is so much more robust, and I can monetize in so many different ways. And people appreciate independent media.”

With Substack, Lorenz says she also has a lot more freedom in terms of format. “I can do short posts, I can do weird blogs, I can integrate things with my podcast. I’ve been doing Substack livestreams. It’s all multimedia and everything feeds each other—there’s no way to do that when you’re at a corporation.” And she now owns all of her content, something that likens her to her namesake from the music industry. “Taylor Swift is a huge inspiration in terms of how she’s taking control and owns what she does,” she says.

To Lorenz, all of it seems like a pleasant throwback to her earliest days writing about the internet. “I was working at a call center and temp jobs when I blew up from blogging. And so it just feels like getting back to that.”

In 2017, Jake Naughton was in front of a crowd of over three hundred people, being recognized by Photo District News as one of thirty new and emerging photographers to watch. “It was a weird time,” said Naughton, now thirty-six, “I was just starting my career. I was in my twenties, and I had endless hustle. All my friends were up-and-coming freelancers, all winning awards, all publishing for our dream clients—it was so exciting.” Jake gave a speech to aspiring young photojournalists on how to be successful. “Three days earlier I had paid my rent on my credit card,” he said.  

Naughton had won a full scholarship to the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, and took positions and internships at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the New York Times, and others. He stayed in the city for four years and published over a hundred stories a year as a freelancer for the Times. He honed his skills in grant writing, logistics, and networking to pursue international stories, balancing assignment work and independently generated projects, including one longer project that looked at LGBTQ refugees in East Africa, which generated over twenty stories. 

Other projects took him to Turkey to cover Syrian refugees, Kenya for water access issues, and Iraq for oil security. His clients included the Times, Time magazine, and National Geographic. He remembers the stories fondly, but the work came with a lot of stress: “If I didn’t pick up the assignment within five minutes, I missed my opportunity. When I left for international projects, it could take me a month to get back on the radar.” While Naughton found purpose in his work, he still wasn’t making a living wage.

A piece of advice from a mentor during his Times internship often echoed in his mind—that for the first ten years of her career, she had never said no. She would always leave meals and cancel plans for last-minute assignments. 

When he received the PDN award, Naughton had $11 in his bank account and was $18,000 in debt. That year, he moved to London with his now-husband, who was attending grad school there, and continued freelancing, though much of his work had dried up—and that wasn’t the worst of it. “Suddenly, I was grappling with many years of secondhand trauma from those projects,” he said, adding that editors sometimes exacerbated the strain. “The hubris of the classic midtown assignment editor cannot be overstated,” he said.

At the same time, he grew frustrated with the notion that the “purity of purpose” in pursuing only journalistic work seemed accessible only to those with a trust fund or a wealthy spouse—neither of which he had. Still, it took him a while to shake the stigma against “failing” as a photojournalist and “succumbing” to more lucrative commercial work. 

By 2018, Naughton and his husband moved to Mexico City, looking for a more sustainable lifestyle. At the same time as he was publishing a book documenting the first five years of his relationship with his husband, he slowly shifted his marketing strategy: attracting more commercial travel and architecture photography clients. He wasn’t the only one making the shift. “Many of my old editors from magazines and newspapers started getting jobs at Apple, Airbnb, and tech startups,” he said. It was one of Naughton’s prior editors who ended up being a consistent commercial client. “It’s just hard when the money is ten or twenty times more, and usually, projects come together with a pretty decent amount of lead time. As I got older and, you know, my lifestyle and desires changed, it became a tough thing to not want,” he said.

Since 2021, most of Naughton’s income has come from commercial work. He said the shift had radically improved his quality of life: more money, lead time on projects, no credit card debt, and a savings account. “I can go on vacation with my husband now,” Naughton said. 

“I only ever wanted to be a photojournalist,” he added. “It was a gift to be invited into someone’s home, to build that type of connection, work for the world’s biggest publications and have so many once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

“But now those experiences and skills have set me up for the rest of my career.”

Isaac Saul’s career began in bustling mainstream media newsrooms, where he learned the craft of journalism from some of the industry’s best. But his time there also revealed a troubling reality: media outlets failed to connect with large segments of the public, alienating audiences with partisan leanings.

While working at the left-leaning Huffington Post, Saul encountered these limitations firsthand. “Half the country didn’t trust anything I was writing because it was published in the Huffington Post, and they didn’t trust them,” he said. It was during this time that he resolved to bridge political divides.

In 2014, he left the Huffington Post to join A Plus, a solutions-oriented news outlet cofounded by Ashton Kutcher. As one of its first editorial hires, Saul helped build the newsroom from the ground up, growing a team from four to thirty people. In doing so, he discovered the fragility of a media businesses reliant on advertising revenue and social media traffic. “Facebook turned the dials; our traffic plummeted; we faced layoffs and ended up losing the whole newsroom, effectively,” Saul recalled. 

In 2019, after years in traditional media, he decided to chart his own path. He launched Tangle, an independent, nonpartisan newsletter designed to present the best arguments from the left, right, and center on major political issues. In prioritizing transparency and inclusivity, Tangle has become an alternative in a polarized media landscape. “Political news is broken. We’re fixing it,” reads the homepage of the website.

The newsletter now boasts over 275,000 subscribers across fifty-five countries, generating more than $2.25 million annually. Perhaps most striking, Tangle attracts a politically diverse audience: 40 percent of readers identify as liberal, 30 percent as conservative, and 30 percent as independent or unaffiliated. “I don’t think any other news organization is really doing that right now,” Saul said.

When asked about what was broken in traditional media, Saul doesn’t hold back. “Trust in the media is at an all-time low,” he said, pointing to how partisan biases in newsrooms alienated large swaths of the population. Saul believes it could take a generation or two for mainstream media to rebuild that trust.

Endorsements, a long-standing tradition in newsrooms, often reinforce the perception of bias in journalism. “Even though we know that newsrooms and opinion editorial teams are separate, most news consumers associate the two with each other,” Saul explained. He believes that endorsements have also lost their effectiveness in swaying voters. “And frankly, I don’t think it’s the role of journalists and media organizations to tell people who to vote for,” he added.

He also criticizes the unsustainable business models driving many traditional media organizations. With their reliance on clicks and audience engagement, publishers often prioritize sensationalism over substance. “Media organizations make decisions based on traffic and subscriptions rather than producing the best journalism,” he said. 

Looking ahead, Saul envisions a future where independent creators and traditional media coexist, each filling critical roles in the evolving journalism landscape. Major outlets like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have the resources to produce investigative journalism and cover global events, while independent journalists carve out unique niches to address gaps left by larger organizations. “If you’re a journalist who does really great work, you’ll find an audience and people who are willing to support you,” Saul said.

He believes the future of journalism depends on building sustainable media businesses that attract top talent through better wages and supportive workplaces. “We need leaders who are willing to invest in better jobs—positions that people want to show up for,” he said. For him, the equation is simple: better jobs lead to better journalism, and better journalism leads to a stronger, more informed society.

For Melissa Lyttle, capturing stories through her lens has always been a sort of calling. As a photojournalist at the Tampa Bay Times, she spent more than a decade documenting the lives of local communities, capturing the raw humanity of her subjects and becoming a trusted industry professional along the way. “I absolutely loved being a community journalist,” Lyttle said. “I loved working with my former colleagues…and telling stories that mattered.”

But in 2014, as newsroom layoffs mounted and budgets shrank, Lyttle faced a tough reality. After surviving years of cuts at the Times, she was offered a buyout and stepped into the uncertain world of freelancing. She flourished as an independent photographer for almost ten years, taking on big assignments and establishing a solid reputation. But freelancing grew more challenging as the market constricted during the pandemic.

Then she analyzed her invoicing data and found a stark trend: in a year, only 15 percent of her work was editorial, while 75 to 80 percent came from commercial clients. The remainder comprised speaking engagements and miscellaneous projects. To pursue the meaningful storytelling projects she was passionate about, Lyttle often relied on grants to fund her work. “I looked back over the last decade and saw the editorial market shrinking in my own invoicing,” she said.

So when she saw a job posting on LinkedIn for a position with TeamPeople, a vendor servicing a number of organizations, including the International Monetary Fund, she applied without hesitation. The very next day, she interviewed, and within twenty-four hours, she received a job offer. Today she supports the IMF Creative department under a contract with TeamPeople.  

Her day-to-day responsibilities range from photographing events, author talks, and lectures to creating portraits of IMF officials and staff. Occasionally, her work takes her far afield, as it did on a recent trip to Kenya, where she documented high-level meetings and captured on-the-ground interactions. Another assignment brought her to Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, for the eightieth anniversary of the IMF and World Bank’s founding—a historic moment in global financial history.

“I feel like I’m still documenting history,” she says, “just for one specific organization now.”

Transitioning to a full-time role servicing a single client brought much-needed stability back into Lyttle’s work life. “Security is the biggest improvement,” she explained. “Having a weekly paycheck is really nice, but also getting to feel ownership again.” 

With TeamPeople, she is part of a creative team and works among other former journalists on the IMF staff. All are dedicated to elevating the organization’s storytelling. The team collaborates daily in brainstorming meetings, sharing ideas and providing constructive feedback. “I like being on a staff,” Lyttle said. “I realized how much I missed having smart colleagues and working as a team.” 

When she reflects on her time as a freelance photographer in Washington, DC, she recalls the constant hustle to secure and complete assignments. Freelancing often meant racing to meet last-minute requests, many of which centered on press conferences or Capitol Hill events. “It’s a lot of scrambling with other journalists to sort of make the same pictures or try to come up with something different from a really boring visual situation,” she said.

Many of Lyttle’s former freelance peers have struggled to navigate the realities of the shrinking editorial market, with some turning to unrelated jobs like driving for Uber or working as portrait photographers to make ends meet. “I have some freelance friends who are in the same boat I was,” Lyttle said. “Really good, really talented people aren’t making what they were accustomed to making and are feeling the crunch.”

For her part, Lyttle continues to freelance, but now with more freedom and control. “I haven’t really left,” she explained. Recent projects include a high-profile shoot for ESPN and work for a local nonprofit, but she can be more selective about taking on the work. “It’s nice to say no to some clients,” she said. 

She has no plans to return to an editorial job. “Few newsrooms today are growing or producing the kind of work I’m passionate about,” she said.