As media jobs disappear and the industry shifts even further to a focus on individual personalities, rather than global brands, many journalists are choosing to leave stable jobs and strike out on their own by starting paid newsletters on platforms such as Substack and beehiiv.
Two prominent television news personalities, the CNN anchor Jim Acosta and ABC News correspondent Terry Moran, both struck out on their own last year. But Wendy McMahon, a veteran television executive who most recently served as president of CBS News before dramatically resigning in May 2025, doesn’t think that TV journalists need to leave their network jobs to be able to start branching out on their own.
“The lines are being blurred between creators and mainstream, and eventually they’re going to fade away,” McMahon, now a senior adviser to beehiiv, said in an interview. “So you can either watch as the future passes you by or you can participate in it fully. And I think the future of journalism isn’t institutions or independence – I think it’s both working together.”
On Monday morning, the longtime CBS News personality David Begnaud announced that he would be keeping his day job as a contributor while starting an independent media company called Do Good Crew that will offer a weekly newsletter powered by beehiiv, a podcast and a live events series. The idea comes out of Begnaud’s weekly Monday-morning television segment highlighting stories of everyday heroes. The podcast, The Person Who Believed in Me With David Begnaud, launches with an interview with Oprah Winfrey.
Begnaud said it was important for him to be able to maintain his relationship with CBS News, which he joined back in 2014 as a national correspondent. “I didn’t want to be arrogant enough to think I didn’t need CBS any more and I could just go and do my own thing,” he said. “I also, secondly, have built a community and I didn’t want to abandon that. That’s why I said to CBS, ‘Let’s do this together.’”
In conversations with the CBS News president, Tom Cibrowski, Begnaud said he pleaded for the opportunity to independently pursue his passion for positive storytelling.
“The company has supported a forward-thinking vision and has not been a hurdle to me, but a bit of a partner in supporting me in wanting to do good and bring on brands who want to be a part of it,” he said. “The respect and reverence I feel for CBS News has never waned because this is the job I dreamed of having, truly.”
With his new company, “now I get to go around America and tell stories that celebrate the best among us, and I get to invite and collaborate with brands that help support me in telling stories about people who do good”, Begnaud said.
McMahon said she had had conversations with television journalists in her orbit about potentially going independent, particularly as networks face cost-cutting and rumors swirl about impending layoffs.
Tyler Denk, the co-founder and chief executive of beehiiv, made a pitch to the hundreds of journalists laid off by the Washington Post, offering free services for a year. He also recently brought a group of beehiiv executives to London to court UK publishers and journalists.
“I believe that legacy newsrooms have enormous strengths,” McMahon said. “They have scale, they have news-gathering resources, which are vital, they have standards, and all of those pieces and parts are really important to a journalist. But what the independent space provides is the innovation and the intimacy, and the new definition of community and fandoms. The future of media, the future of journalism, requires a shared purpose between established players and emerging creators.”
Or, as Begnaud put it: “There are things people are saying ‘yes’ to today that if I had asked in the past, they would have laughed me out of the room … I’m grateful to be alive at a time when the business is changing, because as scary as it might be and seem, and it does at times, I also see it as an immense, incredible opportunity.”
While it’s a newer entrant to the newsletter market than Substack or Patreon, beehiiv has been popular with journalists and celebrities because it doesn’t take a cut of creators’ subscription revenue but instead charges a monthly or annual user fee to use the platform’s services. Journalists who participate in the platform’s media collective get health insurance, access to wire images and the benefits of beehiv’s legal review services – key perks of working for a traditional news company.
“I think journalists and independent media are a big and important cohort of the people that we can serve on the platform,” Denk said in an interview. “The platform is built to be un-opinionated, very flexible, and to help you basically grow and monetize however you think you best can grow and monetize.”
Denk said the company generated $30m in revenue last year. “I still think we’re very early,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve cracked the code on growth.”
