Another prominent journalist is leaving a legacy media outlet for the independence of a self-publishing platform.
Veteran basketball insider Marc Stein announced on Friday that he is leaving the New York Times, where he's worked since 2017 after a long run at ESPN and other national outlets, in favor of running his own original content with the newsletter publisher Substack.
Stein, who boasts around 1.4 million followers on Twitter, said in a series of tweets that he couldn't turn down the "irresistible opportunity" to cover the league in a "fresh and groundbreaking" new way.
In his announcement post on Substack, Stein touted his plans to interact closely with fans, including the use of a social app for journalists, which he likened to reader chats with the added components of timeliness and multimedia.
Stein, who was a fixture on ESPN's NBA programming during his time there, joined the Times in 2017 after he was laid off by the Worldwide Leader, according to Awful Announcing. He was replaced by Adrian Wojnarowski. Stein covered the Mavericks and later was national basketball writer for the Dallas Morning News, and later covered the Clippers and Lakers for the Orange County Register.
He joins several high-profile journalists in making the jump to what many of them bill as a platform that allows for a higher degree of independence.
Other prominent writers who have delved into the newsletter game include political reporters Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and Glenn Greenwald, as well as the prominent music critic Robert Cristgau. Many other lesser-known journalists have joined as well, some of them finding success with their work drawing some of the site's top subscription figures.
Substack newsletters had a combined subscriber base of 500,000 and were attracting 12 millions users per month, Politico reported in April.
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