WTF Is TFN Gonna Do?

A quick check-in on how TFN's soaring, and where we're flying to...

You will believe the news can be fucked. (Drawing by the incomparable Neal Adams.)

Happy 2025, everyone, including bad people!

It’s a new year today, and it’s one year this month since I relaunched TFN here on Substack, so New Year’s Day seems like a good time for a check-in. The news is all good, so if you were worried you can stop reading now.

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For truly obsessive Newsfuckers, I’ll share some metrics I’m probably not supposed to share in just a bit, but first I want to talk about my goals for TFN.

Get it out earlier, consistently, every morning, obvi. But also, I want to improve it.

The comedy could be sharper, conceptually and in its polish. Now, that’s mostly the fault of Donald Trump for winning and sucking the joy out of kicking Democratic establishment leaders. But it’s also a function of the way I work, so I need to get more disciplined.

Plus, I’m ambivalent about comedy. Especially as a tool for social change. Remember how The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and its late-night progeny did not save the world, as far as I can tell, but helped polarize us and sort us into a Manichaean dichotomy? In a funny way, of course!

The questionable effectiveness of comedy aside, there’s another aspect of it I wrestle with. A quotation I saw a few years ago from Rowan Atkinson sums it up for me: “Every joke has a victim.”

I think that’s true¹. That’s why I struggle with comedy.

I want journalism, snarky or otherwise, to reduce the number of victims. Yes, I routinely mock Trump and Elon Musk and their coterie. But I worry that this contributes to division and so, as I said, I wrestle with it and I hope TFN’s growth will afford me the luxury of covering the same subjects in a way that’s inclusive, that opens the door to naysayers instead of ridiculing them.

That said, I also hear you Newsfuckers who tell me how much it means to be able to laugh at shit and I don’t want to sacrifice that. So…I will fall short of my aspirations in this area, but I will keep trying and thinking about how a better Fucking News can fuck the news.

The other aspiration I have is to make the news more actionable. When the internet first started happening — well, actually, when the news industry first noticed it happening — I suggested that stories could link to resources for people to connect with relevant activist organizations and see the records of their representatives on said issue, with an easy click to communicate with said representatives.

This still exists in no mainstream news site of which I’m aware. Which is fucking insane.

I’m not sure how TFN could integrate something approaching that, but I’m still thinking about it.

And the biggest goal, of course, is to figure out how to tell the news in ways that are accessible to everyone without compromising on principle or leaving anyone behind. I have thoughts on how to execute this, but it requires achieving a certain critical mass of Newsfuckers first.

One reason I’m thinking about TFN’s future is that the trajectory it’s on suggests it might have a future. As some Newsfuckers may know, I had a long career in TV news before my seven-year stint with The Young Turks. Since the TYT gig ended in January 2024 I’ve been pursuing a return to TV news.

I suspect what I see as features in my career may read now as bugs, but for whatever reason, I’ve been striking out. I’m just not smart enough, Newsfuckers!

For a big portion of 2024, this was low-key terrifying me. TFN was growing — and I told myself it was growing well — but not enough. We started in January with the 3,000-strong email list from TFN’s previous iteration many years ago (Hi, OG Newsfuckers!) and by late summer had grown by about a third:

(The line starts in 2020 because that’s when I first uploaded the pre-existing subscriber list to Substack; it only starts rising in January 2024 because that’s when TFN started publishing.)

I was still low-key terrified, though, because the growth wasn’t happening fast enough to outrace my family’s bills. Then, in early October, something happened.

The Oct. 3 edition of TFN made a point — not even a great point! — about a Jack Smith filing. And for some reason, that post went nuts. Then subsequent ones did, too.

Now, it’s typical to see a surge of interest in news after the summer lull, with a month to go until The Most Important Election of Our Lifetimes™. But when viewers after the election fled corporate media, the TFN surge not only survived, it grew.

Here’s the full subscriber chart, up through today:

For you innumerate Newsfuckers, let me assure you, this recent growth is much better. Is growth² slowing just a bit now? Yes, it is, which, yes, concerns me. But also, it’s the holidays. And some folks are checking out of politics, recharging before it’s once more unto the breach. So, I’m still hopeful.

And there are other indicators TFN might become sustainable as, like, the thing I do until I die.

It’s not just that TFN is growing. It’s growing while other media are crashing.

It’s even growing relative to other Substacks. I first discovered the Substack politics leaderboard over the summer, when TFN was ranked #216 or something like that. As of today, TFN is ranked #120. Most importantly, we just passed Roger fucking Stone.

But the really best part? The overwhelming majority — like, even bigger than Trump’s mandate landslide plurality — of folks who sign up are sticking around.

The retention rate for paid subscribers after 30 days is 98%. If I have my math right, that’s almost 99%.

After a year, of course, the retention rate for paid subscribers does fall somewhat…to 97%.

That’s a really good indicator of TFN’s potential growth, with so much amazing help from all you crazy Newsfuckers sharing and boosting and up-talking TFN.

So, for now, I’m optimistic. We’re not where we need to be. Yet.

But donations are up, and even if the subscriber growth rate just holds steady, for the first time it’s not nuts to think we can make this work. Which means more reporting, more eyeballs, more impact, not getting evicted, more newsfucking, and better newsfucking. At a time when it feels like we really need it.

So if you’ve already upgraded to a paid subscription, or can’t afford to, you can still help out by sharing TFN with potential Newsfuckers out there. If you can afford it and want to help TFN keep growing in the new year, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

Anyway, I don’t presume most Newsfuckers will care about all of these stats and metrics, but I have heard from some folks that TFN means a lot to them, so New Year’s Day seemed like a good opportunity to share what’s what and what (I hope) is coming.

Oh! And there’s another goal I have for 2025. Many years ago I wrote a webcomic called The Endling that was about evolution and climate change and humans. (Spoilery review here and interview here.) The file formats for each issue, however, aren’t accommodated by Substack, so I can’t post it…unless someone with the tech savvy to figure out what Substack needs and convert the files can help me out.

Jesus Christ, I ain’t shy about asking for shit, am I? Fucking shameless as James Carville…

1. Atkinson makes an exception for jokes about ideas, which is an important category to keep in mind.

2. For the record, TFN is anti-growth when it’s considered as a perpetual requirement rather than a temporary means to get big enough to be sustainable.