Building a newsletter to fight the algorithm ft. Matt Kiser

Matt Kiser is the creator and editor WTF Just Happened Today, a political news newsletter with over 200,000 subscribers built entirely on a pay-what-you-want membership model. In this episode Matt breaks down how he grew from zero to 100,000 subscribers in six months, the editorial philosophy behind curating the news every day for nine years, and the biggest mistakes he made along the way.

Read the newsletter: https://www.creatorspotlight.com/profiles

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Matt Kiser

Newsletter

LinkedIn

Bluesky

GitHub

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Timestamps

00:00 Introducing Matt Kiser

01:18 Zero to 100k in six months

11:06 Building the skill of aggregation and curation

17:41 The death of objectivity

18:37 From 100k to 200k subscribers

20:36 Don’t hate the media, become the media

29:18 Transparency with the revenue model

35:40 The AI podcast controversy

46:46 Biggest mistakes and learning moments

50:23 A deeper connection with the audience