Google who? How a new generation of media startups is thriving without search traffic

Getty Images; Tyler Le/BI
Media companies that grew up on
Google search
are feeling the impact of traffic declines.
A new wave of startups, built on newsletters, podcasts, and video, isn’t sweating it.
This story is one of a five-part series on the changing search landscape.
No Google, no problem.
Search traffic
to many digital publishers is falling, but a new guard of media companies isn’t worried.
The Bulwark is one of them. Jonathan V. Last, the top editor at the center-right news and opinion site, said search was “at the very, very bottom” of his publication’s growth drivers. The Bulwark, which launched in 2018, has become a prominent
publisher on Substack
and YouTube by leveraging anti-Trump sentiment among Republicans.
“Google going to zero will not impact us at all,” Last said.
“Google Zero,” an imagined future in which Google stops sending web surfers to external sites and answers all search questions within its own platform, has become a morbid talking point in media circles. It’s not so far-fetched. People have become less likely to click on external links since Google introduced AI summaries in its search results, a
Pew Research Center study
found.
In many ways, The Bulwark’s strategy is typical of certain media startups that
grew in the post-Facebook
, post-search era. The founders of these startups have tried to avoid relying on referral traffic from tech platforms, determined not to repeat the fate of some in the previous generation of news and culture media companies.
This story is one of a five-part series exploring the changing online search landscape and its impact on consumers, media companies, advertisers, and tech platforms.
Stay tuned for:
GEO is the new buzzword in media. Is it a scam?
A guide to your search options if you’re tired of Google
Google after Google: How the search giant is disrupting itself
Vice Media
and BuzzFeed, for example, were once valued at over a billion dollars each in the mid-2010s, when several tech giants, including Facebook, offered access to large audiences. Those valuations plummeted when the algorithms changed and the traffic gusher stopped. Many digital publishers, including Business Insider, have also been affected by those algorithm changes.
Newer media startups have their own platform dependencies — particularly on
Google-owned YouTube
for video — but have often tried to limit their exposure by focusing on direct reader relationships through email and events.
“When you rely on a platform for your audience, you’re at the mercy of the platform,” Last said.
Jonathan V. Last has seen The Bulwark gain momentum amid President Donald Trump’s rise to power.
The Bulwark
Business Insider interviewed the founders of nine young media startups that have grown — often profitably — without relying on Google and Facebook traffic. They include political outlets like The Bulwark, as well as more niche players such as Ankler Media (Hollywood), Hell Gate (local New York City news), and Aftermath (gaming). They range in size from small operations like
Emily Sundberg’s Feed Me
and the four-person, bootstrapped A Media Operator, to Semafor, which has 90 employees and has raised a net $34 million in funding.
Major exits and big capital raises are rare in this new era, and no startups have anywhere near the head count of publishers like Bloomberg or The New York Times. One standout deal came in October, when Paramount Skydance bought
Bari Weiss’ The Free Press
, the anti-woke media company born on Substack, for $150 million. As part of the deal, Paramount CEO David Ellison named Weiss the editor in chief of CBS News.
Many newer media outlets started as email newsletters, enabled by platforms like Substack and Beehiiv, which offer financial incentives, community-building tools, and support services to journalists who migrate from mainstream news outlets. Some, including Status, Ankler Media, and Feed Me, were founded by solo operators. Those outlets have since branched out to other revenue and distribution
streams like events
, ads, podcasts, and video.
The Bulwark and Ankler Media, for example, use a mix of YouTube, social media, and their own fans to reach new audiences.
“Our members are big evangelists,” Last said. “They forward emails, they tell their friends. That is a huge source of growth for us.”
Startups are winning with scoops and need-to-know information
One key takeaway from the founders: Media startups today must offer something readers can’t get anywhere else, whether it’s scoopy info or a unique point of view, to win subscribers.
Ankler Media subscribers pay $169 annually for highly specific industry information, like what jobs are available in a
shrinking Hollywood
and which kinds of projects are getting the green light. The company is profitable and on track to make roughly $10 million in revenue this year, cofounder and CEO Janice Min said.
“The more granular we get, the better we do,” said Min, who revitalized The Hollywood Reporter before partnering with Richard Rushfield to turn his newsletter The Ankler into a full-fledged media company. “Sometimes you want to take a big swing at a story, but there’s no point in doing the same thing everyone’s doing. I always say, no one wants to read the story about how crappy the industry is. We’re always trying to find solutions for people to find work.”
Oliver Darcy left CNN last year to launch the scoops-focused media newsletter Status, which now serves 100,000 free subscribers and employs four people profitably. (Darcy, a former Business Insider staffer, declined to share how many people pay $150 annually for a subscription.) An early coup: uncovering
RFK Jr.’s relationship
with New York magazine reporter Olivia Nuzzi, which drove a lot of subs.
Oliver Darcy used to cover media companies and personalities for CNN. He says doing the same thing for at Status – the company he owns himself- is working out very well.
Amir Hamja for Status
Worker-owned startup Hell Gate’s pitch is that it covers New York with an irreverent, skeptical eye. Accountability stories like an exposé of the city’s
police watchdog agency
sit alongside city-specific slices of life about
parking privilege abuse
and cheap eats. The company said it is profitable and expects to pull in around $850,000 in subscription revenue this year, supplemented by donations and newsletter ads.
Global news outlet Semafor, one of the few startups in this cohort to raise outside capital, has distinguished itself through its target audience: elites who advertisers will pay a lot to reach.
Justin Smith, CEO of Semafor, bills the site as a “luxury news brand.”
Semafor
Semafor CEO Justin Smith bills his site as a “luxury news brand.” He said this has helped the outlet charge as much as $200 per 1,000 ad impressions — four times the amount of its close competitors — and achieve profitability without a paywall. To cater to this audience, Semafor has focused on hiring big-name journalists, approaching coverage with a global mindset, and using formats that emphasize transparency.
Looking beyond subscriptions for growth
Many of today’s startup founders make money from subscriptions, but have also expanded their revenue streams through
live events
and advertising.
Ankler Media, built on Substack, gets 35% of its revenue from events sponsored by companies like Meta and McKinsey, which value the publication’s narrow, focused audience.
Janice Min, CEO and editor-in-chief of The Ankler.
Sam Barnes/Sportsfile for Web Summit via Getty Images
Three years in, Semafor now generates 50% of its revenue from events, with the rest coming from advertising. It has hosted over 200 events so far, and its 2025 World Economy Summit, held in April, convened more than 200 chief executives.
Startups like Ankler Media and The Bulwark are also leaning into
podcasts and video
, which readers increasingly prefer to text articles. 1440, a daily news digest delivered via newsletter, makes explainer topic pages on subjects ranging from business to science and history, which it produces in both text and video formats.
For emerging companies, getting direct payments from readers is often more lucrative and predictable than ad revenue.
“Members are the only way that I’ve been able to figure out how to make this thing be sustainable for the long run,” Last said. Over 110,000 of The Bulwark’s 890,000 subscribers are paying customers, he said.
Jacob Donnelly, formerly publisher of Morning Brew, which shares a parent company with Business Insider, founded and runs a profitable digital-media business newsletter called A Media Operator. He’s pushing enterprise subscriptions over individual ones. While the revenue per person is less — the price for 10 seats could run $300 a year per person versus $395 for an individual membership, for example — he said it’s worth it if he can charge a company for 10 to 20 seats.
Jacob Donnelly of A Media Operator is focusing on group subscriptions.
Victoria Jempty
Startups see opportunity to build community
One upside of a narrow focus: Many of these startups have built communities around their brands that, in theory, can translate into loyalty and subscription revenue.
Community-building efforts
can include hosting parties or encouraging people to comment in online discussions.
Hell Gate and Feed Me, a “daily newsletter about the spirit of enterprise,” have hosted parties for subscribers. That’s “community right there, getting people out on a Wednesday night,” said Sundberg, Feed Me’s founder.
“It feels great meeting and talking to our subscribers in real life, and it’s been good for us,” said Christopher Robbins, Hell Gate’s editor and cofounder.
The Hell Gate team recently recorded a podcast with Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.
Scott Lynch / Hell Gate
Aftermath, a five-person publication covering gaming, speaks directly to the community by meeting readers where they are already congregating: the
livestreaming platform Twitch
.
“People come and they talk in the comments, and to me, it’s a nice way for us and readers, or listeners in this case, to interact,” said Riley MacLeod, an Aftermath editor and co-owner.
Still, cultivating community can be tough, especially with everything else founders have going on.
Casey Newton
, founder of tech-news startup Platformer, has shared online that it’s been hard to get his audience of tech company employees to comment publicly on his Discord.
Riley MacLeod of Aftermath said Twitch is a useful platform for connecting with readers.
Riley MacLeod
The ‘influencer’ founder problem
In the era of the creator economy, these brands often put personality front and center. For founders, one question they face is how reliant they want to be on their own star power.
The most dynamic media startups now are individual-fronted brands, said Brian Morrissey, founder of The Rebooting, a newsletter about building media companies. He cited
“TBPN,” the buzzy tech talk
show,

as an example. “The problem is, it doesn’t scale, it’s exhausting, it’s so risky. It’s about how you continue it for the long term without diluting the brand.”
Sundberg built a profitable media business by serving as the primary voice of her
Substack newsletter
. While she is still the face of the brand, hosting events every other month, she now leads a small team of writers, editors, and freelancers. This month, she launched a video podcast, “Expense Account,” that stars a collaborator, J Lee, rather than herself.
“I’m spending a lot of time building the business side of Feed Me,” Sundberg said, and that doesn’t require having “every single one of my 10 fingers on it.”
Ankler Media started around sharp-elbowed columnist Rushfield, but it has grown less reliant on him and Min as ambassadors for the brand as the staff has expanded to 14.
“I don’t do as much TV as I used to,” Min said. “But our people are out there.”
Workweek launched in 2021
around a set of 21 B2B creators who wrote newsletters on topics such as fintech, marketing, and healthcare. It has since been trimmed to seven newsletters and pivoted to building out a few social platforms to connect readers to each other, rather than relying solely on its big-name voices.
Workweek CEO Adam Ryan said that the creators remain a core part of the business, but the goal is to build a system where readers can interact with each other, ask questions about their businesses, and create content.
Emily Sundberg, founder of Feed Me,
Feed Me
Staying relevant and outracing AI
Even if they’re not worried about Google search, these startups have their own set of headaches.
Newsletter publishers are regularly fighting to avoid email spam filters and find new audiences as some of their existing readers unsubscribe. Being small and scrappy means figuring out things like payroll and legal coverage. Twelve-hour days aren’t uncommon. Substack has powerful recommendation features that can create a type of platform dependency.
“Costs increase every year, so you have to grow every year,” said Donnelly of A Media Operator. “I want to build a business that’s successful and returns capital to me and provides an opportunity to do good work. Staying sustainable is important to accomplish that. Also, if you don’t grow, you’re vulnerable to churn.”
For upstarts built by journalists, selling subscriptions can be a big adjustment.
“I’m the guy who deals with all the money, and this is my first time knowing anything about business,” Aftermath’s MacLeod said.
Every path to making money in media has its challenges. Events are good at convening people, but they are labor-intensive and hard to scale. Advertising and subscriptions are crowded.
And in ways still unknowable, AI will disrupt media. That’s one reason many recent media founders have prioritized growing their operations slowly and sustainably. Well, that and the lack of easy VC money.
“Each model has its own flaws,” Morrissey said of the media landscape. “I’m glad people are still building. People will always be creating media companies. They’re just smaller.”
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