After writing for a few years what she called a 'niche newsletter for insiders in Washington', the political journalist Tara Palmeri decided that she wanted to reach a wider audience. A much wider audience.
She takes her report to YouTube.
Mrs. Palmeri said she leaves the start-up Puck to hit alone and to concentrate many of her efforts on the streaming giant. She joins a whole series of other journalists who have left news organizations to build their own companies around podcasts and newsletters.
But in politics the most successful of these independent media sterns have strong views and clear faith. Conservative hosts such as Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly remain on top of the podcasting cards, and anti-Trump media collectives grow fast; Two of them, the Contrarian and Meidastouch, each have more than half a million newsletter subscribers, many of them paid.
That is not Mrs. Palmeri.
“I am not on a crusade,” said Mrs. Palmeri, 37, the type of political journalist who proudly votes in elections while she covers them to keep objectivity with her audience. “I was not sold on both parties, and that's why I don't really have many friends.”
In her new company, Mrs. Palmeri wants to speak with the public from the underdeveloped area of 'Het Midden', she said, without a political agenda. “There is no one there yet, and I want to try it.”
When focusing on YouTube, Mrs. Palmeri also takes a slightly different tack than much of the journalists who recently left media companies – voluntarily or through dismissals – to release their own content, usually on substit. (Although she will also have a substituet newsletter.)
YouTube says that viewers want more long news analysis, especially through podcasts. It recently announced that it has more than one billion monthly podcast listeners who surpassed any other media platform. (Looking and listening to podcasts is an ever vague distinction.) Mrs. Palmeri is part of a program that is intended to support “next generation” independent journalists on the platform with training and financing.
But whether “news effort” as Mrs. Palmeri can succeed on the same scale as popular partisan commentators has still not been tested. Many people say they want more unbiased news. Are they real?
Adam Faze, an emerging media guru who is known for producing ticks that advises Mrs. Palmeri informally, said that he was not aware of other political journalists who approaching YouTube, just like them.
“Not with her access,” he said. Piers Morgan has been successful, remarked Mr. Faze, but his YouTube channel is largely reminiscent of his cable news days, with cacophoneous cross-pricing panels and a cityscape background with a green screen.
“I don't want you to go to this YouTube page and think:” I could have looked at that on a cable canal, “said Mrs. Palmeri. She strives to” speak like a normal person, “instead of a news anchor, and also” groan “.
Mrs. Palmeri is proud of her grit. She often describes herself as “feared and fearless” – a daughter of New Jersey whose parents did not go to universities. Her zeal for scoops have made her unpopular in different ways among both Democrats and Republicans and occasionally other journalists.
Before Puck, while he worked for Politico, Mrs. Palmeri reported to an investigation into a gun that was owned by Hunter Biden, a story that she told had 'banned' her from her newsroom. In 2021, a deputy secretary of the White House resigned after he told Mrs. Palmeri that he would 'destroy' her for reporting on his relationship with an Axios journalist who had dealt with the president.
An Old-school tabloid sensitivity drives Mrs. Palmeri, who in her 20s a few of the white house-gate crashers appeared for the Washington examiner and posted a “cop-killer” in Cuba for the New York post. On her new substit, the red letter, she plans to record blind gossip items, said Mrs. Palmeri.
“She has a cadence that gives you the feeling that you just talk to a friend” instead of a journalist, said Holly Harris, an experienced Republican strategist that encouraged Mrs. Palmeri to become independent. This institution can turn out to be “a bit dangerous”, Mrs. Harris added: “You suddenly realize that you have given up the state secrets.” In November, at a cocktail party in Washington, a former congress staff member approached this reporter with the warning not to trust Mrs. Palmeri, who was also on the party. (“I think that's great,” said Mrs. Palmeri later.)
Mrs. Palmeri sometimes has difficulty fit into more traditional newsrooms, such as ABC News, where she spent about two years as a correspondent of the White House – the first of which rarely appeared in the air.
“I have always had the feeling that there has never really been a place where I went home,” she said.
After ABC, she organized research podcasts for Sony about the loss financier Jeffrey Epstein and the rich family of his partner, Ghislaine Maxwell. She plans to continue making podcasts; Her current show, 'Somebody's Gotta Win', an election cooperation between Puck and Spotify's The Ringer, will end in April, she said.
Puck, where she joined in 2022, was more suitable for her self -driven (and self -promotional) streak than any other employer. “We are a kind of apostates,” said Mrs. Palmeri, who credited Puck to help find her voice.
“It was the closest place where I had written directly to an audience, but it was still edited in a style that I was not,” she said. The tone was more “elite and impressive” than her natural voice; An example she offered was the frequent use of the word 'indeed'.
To become independent, she gives her $ 260,000 basic salary at Puck and finances her new company with her savings. The dining table of her apartment with one bedroom in Brownstone Brooklyn has become her recording studio.
With a first subsidy from YouTube, Mrs. Palmeri bought about $ 10,000 in equipment and tested and was rented Editors. (She and YouTube both refused to announce the size of the subsidy.) In exchange, she committed herself to publish about four videos a week.
Investors are also interested in Mrs. Palmeri, she said, although she did not decide whether or if they have to take their money. She would rather accept 'squeaky clean' financing of both ends of the political spectrum, she said, “This is a trust business.” She has also considered a new credit line or a loan with small companies.
“I am willing to bet on myself,” said Mrs. Palmeri. “There is no one about me who tells me:” This is the head, this is the corner. ” Don't you like it.
