Former Reach Welsh affairs editor Will Hayward has said going solo via Substack has proved to be a financial “no-brainer” — even if it has also meant a lot more work.
Hayward, who worked at Reach’s national Welsh site Wales Online from 2016 until last year, left the publisher in September.
The Will Hayward Newsletter, which he first launched via Substack for Wales Online and has since re-launched independently, focuses on Welsh politics. It publishes approximately weekly and is partially paywalled, charging £50 a year or £6 a month for full access and perks like live Q&As.
Hayward was shortlisted for the British Journalism Award for comment journalism last year for his work on the newsletter while it was housed at Reach (up against the likes of The Times, The Economist and The Guardian).
His departure from the company is part of a trend that has seen several prominent journalists in the UK and US leave their employers to launch solo newsletters or even whole new publications, including The Times’ Henry Winter and David Aaronovitch, MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan, The Washington Post’s Jen Rubin and The Guardian’s Jim Waterson.
[Read more: More than 50 newsletters earn $500,000+ on Substack — exclusive new ranking]
Hayward said he has “nothing but good things to say about Wales Online”.
“I loved working there. I’d always want to make that really clear. They were great to me, and in many ways I was sad to leave. But I think readers feel, probably, a bit more of an attachment when you’re an independent and they see you as a person.”
Hayward has been a professional journalist since 2016, when he joined Wales Online as a trainee. He had spent four years running a fitness business before that, but quit to study at the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Culture because he “hated it”.
He rose to the position of Wales Online social affairs correspondent in 2019 and then began providing maternity cover for political editor Ruth Mosalski the day before the 2020 Covid lockdown began.
“This was the thing that really made my career… I was thrust into it from there.”
Once Mosalski returned from leave Hayward moved into the role of Welsh affairs editor, during which he said he was “one of only two people who was in the Welsh Government and the UK Government lobbies”.
He only left Wales Online, he said, because “I just wanted to try and do something different…
“I’ve got responsibilities with my family, and it’s easier to balance that with being freelance. Even though I work far more hours now than I ever did when I was a salaried journalist.”
There are not many independent professional journalists covering Welsh politics, Hayward said. “Compared to Scotland, it’s not got as developed a media landscape.”
Wales has been hard-hit by the decline of the local press, with previous Press Gazette analysis finding several local authorities there that were going largely uncovered. Nationally, in addition to Wales Online the country is served by BBC Wales, ITV Cymru, English-language digital news service Nation.Cymru, Welsh language Golwg360 and the Western Mail, the print counterpart to Wales Online.
“I think Wales is really lucky because it’s got some fantastic journalists,” Hayward said, “and I’m not including myself in that. The journalists it does have are really good, diligent, they really care about Wales and they understand the patch.”
But, he added, “we could always use more”.
The Will Hayward Newsletter commercial strategy: Subscriptions and ‘a quality readership’ for advertisers
Going solo has meant having to figure out who his audience was away from Wales Online, Hayward said, and editorially “obviously you don’t have a newsroom and other people to bounce ideas off and think: ‘Is this actually a story?’”
But he said that what he found hardest had been “just the business side of journalism as opposed to just the journalism side of journalism”.
Hayward said he derives “the vast majority” of his income from The Will Hayward Newsletter, although he is also a paid columnist for The Guardian and puts out a podcast which is supported with sponsorships and live events.
Hayward originally wrote The Will Hayward Newsletter as part of his Reach job, and the company kept that Substack — since rebranded to The Journal — after he left. Hayward said it took “about two and a half months” for him to rebuild his newsletter audience to the size it had been when he was at Reach.
“It’s the same tone as [it had been], but it’s more detailed, it’s more in-depth and I think it’s a lot better, because it’s now what I do for a living, as opposed to an additional thing I did alongside my job.”
The newsletter is nearing 4,500 free subscribers, Hayward said, and “it’s a quality readership, in terms of a lot of decision-makers subscribe to it”.
Sponsors on the newsletter and podcast so far have included a business that sells advertising space, a training provider and a manufacturer. Hayward said his products were “a way to reach people who have influence, and it’s the sort of people that a lot of businesses want to reach”.
The newsletter does not have a political stance, Hayward said, besides being “pro-Wales”, which he felt had helped broaden its commercial appeal.
Hayward did not disclose how many paid subscribers the newsletter has. Substack itself advises that “we tend to see 5-10% of free subscribers convert to paying subscriptions”, but this figure can vary significantly.
Having originally set aside enough “that I could go for six months” without breaking even, Hayward said he is “forecast to make more money now than I was when I was a salaried journalist.
“Obviously, there’s the fact that I have to do a lot more now, but financially it’s proved to be a bit of a no-brainer”.
The number of subscribers has “grown pretty much continuously”, Hayward said. The best driver of growth had been “unique investigative journalism and stuff that people feel like they can’t get anywhere else”, he said, citing as examples interviews he had conducted with Reform MPs Nigel Farage and Lee Anderson.
But Hayward added that he “didn’t realise how hard this would be to do. In some ways it’s really tough — it’s not an easy thing to do.
“I’m really lucky for the support that I’ve had and some of the partners I’ve worked with. But it’s getting to the point where I need to think about — do I hire people? And obviously, that takes you into a whole new realm of commitments, financially. So it can work, but it’s not easy.”
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