Building trust through newsletters while navigating the daily news cycle

Notes from the Lenfest Audience Community of Practice

April 4, 2025

The Audience Community was joined by Matt Kiser, the creator, founder, and publisher behind the WTF Just Happened Today newsletter, for its April 2025 session.

What: Matt Kiser has been covering the Trump administration (and the in between) for nearly nine years. He has produced more than 1,500 editions of his WTF just happened today newsletter, which now helps more than 200,000 subscribers keep up with the barrage of news coming out of Washington, D.C. He talked with us about building audience trust, getting audiences to pay for your content without a paywall and how he manages an overwhelming administration.  

TL;DR: Matt Kiser took the concept of 1,000 fans and made it a reality. By finding a small percentage of readers willing and able to pay for a daily dump of curated Trump news he’s built a sustainable media business that speaks to a key audience need: the ability to keep up with political news without exhaustion and overwhelm. 

The newsletter started as a 100-day challenge but quickly found a robust audience. Kiser was committed to keeping his content free and incorporated a pay-what-you-want revenue model. 

Key Learning: It’s not all about numbers. A dedicated audience can provide enough financial support to sustain a media business, even one that gives away its product for free. 

Even now, only about 2-3% of his audience has paid him, but that’s been enough to keep him in business—even as his financial needs grew. By creating a free product with optional membership, Kiser says he’s forced to continually deliver on his promise to readers to provide something worth paying for. 

He communicates challenges with his audience—things like needing to support a growing family or take time off— and has found an audience that wants him to be able to afford to live and take time off. 

Money Quote: “You don’t have to be a big scale-chasing organization to be successful. You can be a solopreneur who does one thing and does it well, and find enough people to support you that you can make a lifestyle business out of this.”