Tech culture columnist Taylor Lorenz is striking out on her own, exiting The Washington Post to launch her own publication on the Substack platform.
Lorenz is launching User Magazine, which will “cover technology from the user side. It’s about who has power on the internet and how that power is being wielded,” she says.
“I just wanted to get out of legacy media. I feel like it’s just really, really difficult to do the kind of reporting that I want to do on the internet within these kind of older institutions as a primary job,” Lorenz tells The Hollywood Reporter in an interview. “I like to have a really interactive relationship with my audience. I like to be very vocal online, obviously. And I just think all of that is really hard to do in the roles that are available at these legacy institutions.”
“I think also legacy institutions generally have just really struggled to cover the internet in any meaningful way, I think that they often sort of shy away from the internet,” she adds. “I write about the attention economy, and I write about the content creator industry, and I just want complete autonomy to write and do and say whatever I want, and engage a little bit more directly with my readers, with the public, when it comes to my work.”
Lorenz says that while User Mag will initially just be her, she would like to add contributors over time, and also expand it to other mediums.
As for what readers can expect, Lorenz is promising news, features and analysis, as well as interviews, deep-dive reporting and links to others covering the space.
“I will be reporting on the people and movements that are steering tech and internet culture, from weird online phenomena, to under-the-radar trends, to platform developments, to policy initiatives, to the powerful forces that shape our online world,” Lorenz wrote in a post introducing User Mag.
“I want to do a lot more creative projects, I’m just excited to kind of have my own little entity,” she says. “It’s starting with the newsletter, but I would love for it to be more multimedia.”
Before joining The Washington Post in 2022, Lorenz covered internet culture for outlets including The New York Times and The Daily Beast. (Lorenz is also contributing an essay to THR for the magazine’s upcoming Creators A-List issue.)
But she notes that she is also a content creator herself, posting videos to YouTube and sharing memes on Instagram, while also hosting a podcast for Vox Media called Power User.
“I’m often credentialed as a content creator instead of part of the legacy media, and I operate very much in that world already,” she says. “I feel like, if I have to pick a side, I don’t want to pick the legacy media side, I’d rather just go further into kind of what I’ve always done, which is to have more of my own voice online.”
As for the decision to use Substack to power User Mag, Lorenz says that the platform’s turnkey nature, and its large and established user base were a tipping point.
“Substack is just far and away the best platform for getting up and running really quickly and for free,” Lorenz says.
“Taylor Lorenz is an accomplished reporter with deep experience covering internet trends and culture,” says Hamish McKenzie, co-founder of Substack. “She has always stood out for her independent mindset and her ability to land the kinds of stories her peers wish they had gotten. We think she will thrive on Substack with the direct support of her audience.”
Lorenz’s decision to leave the Post and launch her own publication comes a month after NPR reported that the newspaper planned to review an incident involving a photo she shared on her Instagram.
Lorenz says, however, that she has weighed going independent for a long time, and that the current moment was the right time to make the jump.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/b...ton-post-launch-user-mag-substack-1236011888/ (Archive)
