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The Free Press (Bari Weiss media)
American Internet-based media company From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Free Press (The FP, originally as Common Sense) is an American Internet-based media company based in New York, New York, founded by journalist Bari Weiss and her spouse Nellie Bowles.[1][2] The company started as a newsletter in 2021,[3][4] and grew into an associated media company in 2022.[1]
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History
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Origins
Weiss and Bowles, then a reporter at The New York Times, launched Common Sense as a newsletter on the Substack platform on January 12, 2021, after Weiss resigned from The Times. Within a week, the newsletter had brought in $80,000 in annual subscription revenue. Weiss described Common Sense as a "newsletter for the 21st century". By October, the newsletter had more than 100,000 subscribers, including enough paying subscribers to hire a staff of five people.[1][3][5][6] The newsletter was named after the political pamphlet of the same name by Thomas Paine.[4] It covers politics, culture, and current events.[7][8][9][10]
In March 2022, Weiss raised between $1 million and $5 million to expand the venture from investors such as venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and David Sacks; former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz; Allen & Company; and former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick.[11]
In June 2021, as part of Common Sense, Weiss launched the Honestly podcast, which has since featured guests including Kim Kardashian, Bill Barr, and Andrew Yang.[12][13]
Rebrand as The Free Press
Weiss rebranded Common Sense as The Free Press in 2022.[7][8] In 2022, she expanded The Free Press into a media company with a dozen staff and writers as well as contributors and a subscription-based business model.[7][8] The Free Press also hired Andy Mills, former producer of The Daily, to develop audio programming for the company.[1]
By October 2023, the company employed about 25 staffers in New York City and Los Angeles.[14] Journalists and writers who have written for The Free Press include Emily Yoffe,[1] Michael Shellenberger,[1] and Joe Nocera. Regular contributors include Douglas Murray and Vinay Prasad.[citation needed]
In December 2024, Wall Street Journal editor Dennis K. Berman was hired as the company's first publisher and president.[15] In April 2025, The Free Press added author and economist Tyler Cowen, legal scholar Jed Rubenfeld, writer Coleman Hughes, journalist Matthew Continetti, and author Batya Ungar-Sargon as regular columnists.[16][17]
In 2025, Semafor reported that journalist Michael C. Moynihan resigned from the The Free Press. He was critical of the direction of the publication, saying, "[One] didn't have to be especially prescient to spot those 'anti-woke' types who would just slowly become MAGA flunkies."[18]
Events
The Free Press expanded into events in 2023, holding its first event in September 2023—a debate over the sexual revolution featuring Grimes, Louise Perry, Anna Khachiyan, and Sarah Haider. The sold-out event at the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles was attended by 1,600 people.[14] During 2024, The Free Press held live debate events in San Francisco, Dallas, Washington, D.C. and New York City.[19]
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Reception
As of August 2024, the site had over 100,000 paid subscribers and over 750,000 total subscribers. Substack confirmed that it was the top newsletter on the platform by revenue. It is also at the top of the leaderboard at Substack for politics.[11][20] As of December 2024, The Free Press had over 136,000 paid subscribers and was taking in at least $10 million annually.[15]
Conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan has criticized The Free Press for what he views as its reluctance to stand up for the free-speech rights of anti-Israel activists.[21] Writing for The New Statesman, Ross Barkan described the organization as "unapologetically hawkish and anti-Palestinian".[22] The think-tank Responsible Statecraft described it as "a pro-Israel media outlet often sympathetic to the neoconservative worldview".[23]
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Coverage
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The founding of the University of Austin was first announced in then Common Sense in an article by founding president Pano Kanelos.[24][25][26]
In December 2022, The Free Press published information about the Twitter Files after Twitter CEO Elon Musk provided Weiss with access to records of Twitter's internal communications.[12][27] The information Weiss discussed included blacklisting of accounts and suppression of trending topics.[6][28] Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, and Michael Shellenberger shared the inaugural Dao Prize for Excellence In Investigative Journalism, awarded by the National Journalism Center, for their Twitter Files coverage.[29][30]
In early 2023, Megan Phelps-Roper hosted a podcast series at The Free Press titled The Witch Trials of J. K. Rowling, featuring interviews with Rowling and others on all sides of the cultural conflicts surrounding the author and her views on transgender people.[31][32] The podcast series had over 5 million listeners.[33]
In late 2023, articles from The Free Press condemned the attack on Israel by Hamas and criticized mainstream media coverage of the ensuing war for what it says is the spread of misinformation.[34][30] Around October 22, Weiss alleged that vandals scrawled antisemitic graffiti outside the office of The Free Press.[35]
In 2024, The Free Press first reported on a video of NYU professor Amin Husain denying sexual and gender-based violence in the 7 October attack on Israel and describing New York as a "Zionist city" at a Students for Justice in Palestine rally. NYU suspended Husain after the video and news story were publicized.[36]
References
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