Interview #205: How Kat Tenbarge Makes Money Writing

Kat Tenbarge built her name breaking massive investigations into influencer sexual violence and internet culture at legacy publications like NBC News. After surviving the corporate media layoffs of 2025, she took her progressive feminist beat independent and launched Spitfire News. Today, she balances her reader-supported Beehiiv newsletter with high-profile freelance bylines at WIRED and The Verge while expanding heavily into video production.

In this interview, Kat discusses the logistics of independent investigative reporting. She explains the realities of operating without a corporate legal department, details how Beehiiv’s Media Collective subsidizes her liability insurance, and shares the subscriber targets required for the newsletter to fully replace her supplementary freelance income. If you want a clear-eyed look at surviving digital media layoffs and building a profitable indie journalism brand, this one is for you.

• What you do: Independent journalist

• Years writing professionally: 8.

• Earnings range: Under six figures.

💰 Writing is solitary work, but talking about the finances doesn’t have to be. Our archive is now 200+ honest conversations deep, breaking down book advances, day jobs, and real numbers from writers across every genre and stage of the game. Upgrade your subscription to unlock the library and read how they make it work.

Having a bunch of different income streams is necessary at this stage in my independent career. Whether I make more from the newsletter or freelance writing varies from month to month, but those individual freelance pieces do add up to a substantial slice of the pie.

Right now, I also do other forms of freelance work to supplement my writing career, including video work. Because video is so valued and sought after compared to writing right now, I suspect that it will continue to play a big role in my content indefinitely.

By the time I got laid off, I had already been thinking about starting a newsletter for a while. One of the reasons I felt like I could do it was that I already had a following on platforms like Bluesky, I already appeared on a lot of podcasts, and I already had an email list with around 2,000 subscribers from a short-lived Substack a few years prior. All of those things helped me get off the ground very quickly. I also went on a live podcast tour around the US with one of my friends shortly after launching and physically handed people QR codes to subscribe.

But one thing I didn’t know was how quickly I could get enough subscribers to live off the income from the newsletter alone. It’s nowhere near immediate. I feel very fortunate to have the support I’ve gotten so far, and I still think it will take a few years to actually reach that point. For now, I have to cultivate a balance between the newsletter and other income streams.