Mehdi Hasan has told Press Gazette he wants his new publication Zeteo to go beyond news and be “an all-singing, all-dancing media company”.
The former MSNBC host’s new venture will feature “hard-hitting” interviews, news and opinion, and likely skew to the left, via newsletters, podcasts and video. It promises “strong bias for the truth and an unwavering belief in the media’s responsibility to the public. Unfiltered news, bold opinions.”
Hasan, who is Zeteo’s editor-in-chief and chief executive, told Press Gazette on Friday that Zeteo signed up “thousands more” paid subscribers than expected in its first week since its soft launch on Monday 26 February.
At time of publication Zeteo had a total of 94,000 subscribers on Substack, where the new publication is hosted. Hasan would not disclose the number of paid subscribers but said it was “fivefold above what our expectations were”.
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Mehdi Hasan’s ‘steep learning curve’
Zeteo subscriptions are billed at £7 ($8) for a month or £60 ($72) for a year, with an additional “founding member” tier priced at a minimum of £400 ($500) a year.
As well as access to more content than free subscribers, paying subscribers get access to a “Mehdi’s Mailbag” feature and live Q&A sessions with Hasan. Founding members also get “exclusive Zoom calls with Mehdi and a signed copy of his book”.
Although Substack is most well known for hosting newsletters, Zeteo will also offer a weekly podcast and a weekly streaming show which Hasan will host.
The publication intends to go fully live in April, but funds are already being accepted from paying subscribers, who gain access to some perks before the full launch. On Friday for example Hasan hosted a “town hall” about Gaza for 500 paying subscribers.
Hasan told Press Gazette the brisk uptake showed “there’s clearly a desire, a need, a want for an alternative media platform, both in the US and the UK – where we’re getting a lot of subscribers from – at a time when people are very upset about multiple issues, obviously chief among them the media’s failure on Gaza”.
The name Zeteo “comes from the ancient Greek word for ‘seeking out,’ for striving and discovering, for ‘getting to the bottom of things”, Hasan has explained.
Zeteo currently comprises five staff including Hasan, but he said it has plans to hire “at least three or four more”, ideally with backgrounds in subscription, marketing and editorial television production.
The outlet will be based out of Washington DC, where Hasan’s show will be filmed, but he added that Zeteo will have both American contributors and international ones who “your readers will be familiar with”.
He said the company hadn’t “made any decisions” on adding sponsorships or events as revenue streams, but intended to take advertising “when we get onto Youtube and when the podcast, perhaps, becomes a success story”.
But he added: “I don’t want to be at the whims of advertisers. If the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, is someone who has to worry about advertisers, little old me and start-up Zeteo doesn’t want to have to do that.
“We’re all about free speech and speaking our minds and telling the truth – therefore we think the subscriber option is better for business and it’s better for our editorial values…
“It’s a new world for me. I’m not an entrepreneur, I’m not a businessman, I’ve never had anything to do with a start-up. I’ve been on a very steep learning curve in recent weeks.”
Zeteo will feature ‘impressive and surprising’ people from entertainment and comedy
Hasan is most famous as a political pundit, having made his name on Question Time and the New Statesman in the UK before moving to Al Jazeera and, subsequently, NBC’s Peacock streaming network and liberal network MSNBC.
The cancellation of his MSNBC programme in January prompted was met with some criticism, and he has since been poached as a regular columnist for The Guardian US.
[Read more: Guardian US hires Mehdi Hasan as regular columnist after quitting MSNBC]
But Hasan said Zeteo is “not just going to be politics”.
“We’re launching a podcast with some folks out of Hollywood – people from the entertainment and comedy space – I think some of the names are going to be very impressive and positively surprising to a lot of people when we roll them out in April.
“We’re trying to be more than just a news organisation, we do want to be an all-singing, all-dancing media company, a media platform. So we are going to talk about culture and entertainment and Hollywood and all of those issues.”
Although Substack has previously given some writers and publications cash incentives to launch on the platform, Hasan said Zeteo had not used any such benefits. Instead it has launched using $4m raised from investors, who Hasan said were mostly family and friends.
“It’s people I know who are well-off enough to support something they care deeply about — American professionals who are deeply disappointed in the way the media has covered some of the major issues of our time.
“When I left MSNBC they reached out to me, not the other way around, saying ‘how do we support you?’”
Hasan said the start-up was launching on Substack because the platform offers “speed, flexibility and – what a lot of people don’t realise because they associate Substack with newsletters and emails and writing – their video platform is very strong.
“We’re going to be able to upload our shows directly to Substack – we don’t have to worry about being shadowbanned [having visibility decreased] on Youtube or X [formerly Twitter] or anywhere else.”
Prospects for journalism in US ‘not good at all’, says Mehdi Hasan
Asked what he thought about the outlook for US journalism, Hasan said “not good, not good at all”.
Citing the “bloodbath” of layoffs in the US at the start of the year, including the abrupt shuttering of The Messenger in January, he said: “It’s very sad to see what’s happening – but worse, it’s dangerous.
“In a time of rising fascism, we need a free press and a healthy press and a well-resourced press to hold the people in power to account, and especially to cast a critical eye on the rise of the fascists and the far right and the racists.
“That’s why even media organisations I don’t agree with, or don’t particularly like – I’m not happy when they go bust, because every time you get one less journalist employed, that’s only of benefit to people who want to screw us over.”
Asked what strategy Zeteo would take to try and navigate the headwinds, Hasan said: “What I’m going to do strategically is a very, very simple thing: I’m going to speak my mind, I’m going to encourage my contributors to speak their minds, and we will always be truthful with people.
“I think that’s what people want. People are fed up with euphemisms, they’re fed up with mealy-mouthed coverage, they’re fed up with fake balance, they’re fed up with both-sidesism.”
The same day Press Gazette spoke with Hasan we also spoke to Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief of fellow news start-up Semafor, about that publication’s new Microsoft-sponsored Global Election Hub.
Asked if he had any advice for another news organisation launching into a torrid economic environment, Smith said: “I think he’ll be really successful, [he] has a very intense following and a very clear voice.”
But rather than building out a multi-person news outlet, Smith said his “commercial advice would be that it should just be all about him”.
[Read more: Mehdi Hasan on making it in America and why media can’t ‘reset the clock’ on Trump]
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