Netflix is much from a dying spiral, however one of many greatest media tales of 2022 turned out to be the corporate’s gorgeous subscriber stumble. The streamer misplaced virtually half its inventory worth and got here to be seen as a possible acquisition goal. I requested Rushfield if he felt vindicated. “I wanna leap up and down,” he stated, “and yell ‘I advised you so’ each day.”
Rushfield, 54, grew up in Pacific Palisades and attended Santa Monica’s prestigious Crossroads Faculty, the place he overlapped with future hotshots like Matthew Greenfield, Jay Sures, Brett Morgen, Jason Blumenthal, Maya Rudolph, and Jack Black. Rushfield’s youthful sister, the TV author Alexandra Rushfield, was buddies at Crossroads with Jenni Konner, who went on to showrun HBO’s Ladies with Lena Dunham. At Hampshire School in Western Massachusetts, Rushfield frequented punk reveals—X, Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Henry Rollins (he noticed Black Flag in highschool)—and wrote a decidedly gothy senior thesis about Jacques-Louis David’s work from the French Revolution (Marat bleeding to dying in a bath, and so forth.). After graduating, he adopted the grunge-era playbook of loafing round and not using a plan. Then he landed an entry-level gig with the ’92 Clinton marketing campaign, sharing a small cigarette-smoke-filled workplace with Noah Shachtman, now editor in chief of Rolling Stone. “Even once we had been children, he was a determine from a distinct period,” Shachtman recollects. “I felt like he had stepped out of a Raymond Chandler novel.”
After working as a subject organizer for a number of different Democratic campaigns, Rushfield pursued a writing profession. His first byline, a front-of-book merchandise for Los Angeles journal, highlighted a stand-up comedy present that includes rising stars like David Cross, Bob Odenkirk, Patton Oswalt, Margaret Cho, and Janeane Garofalo. (He grew to become buddies with plenty of these of us.) “I believe it ran two sentences and I bought $25,” Rushfield recollects. In 1998, he and his buddy Adam Leff conceived a Spy-inspired trend-forecasting charticle, “The Intelligence Report,” which caught the attention of Graydon Carter. He gave them a contract with this journal, the place the column appeared a number of occasions a yr till 2010. (Rushfield has additionally written a number of options for Self-importance Truthful.) By the mid-2000s, Rushfield was working as an online editor on the Los Angeles Occasions, the place a print higher-up as soon as advised him the one purpose individuals wished the net variations of articles was so they may print them out to learn within the bathtub. He embraced the net, the place he ended up spending nearly all of his skilled life. In 2009, Rushfield left the Occasions to turn into West Coast editor of Gawker. He then wrote a e book about American Idol and did excursions of BuzzFeed, Yahoo, and, lastly, HitFix, the place he was editor in chief earlier than the positioning was acquired in 2016. “The second half of my profession was engaged on each web site, basically,” he advised me.
The Ankler virtually didn’t occur. After HitFix, Rushfield was accepted to the USC Rossier Faculty of Training to pursue a graduate diploma in educating. Across the identical time, impressed by the success of The Data, Jessica Lessin’s subscription-powered tech-news publication, he began sending an e mail digest to a small group of buddies, who began exhibiting it to their buddies, who then forwarded it to their buddies. Earlier than he knew it, he had a formidable distribution record. “It began getting handed round in a short time to the chief class,” Rushfield advised me. He determined towards USC Rossier and put his eggs in The Ankler as a substitute. “It took me time to stand up the center to place down a paywall, however I made that leap.”
Rushfield first met Min on the Golden Globes a couple of decade in the past, “caught on the children’ desk within the again,” Min joked. A former Individuals and InStyle reporter and editor who grew to become a mid-aughts media star because the editor in chief of Us Weekly, Min was within the midst of her celebrated reinvention of The Hollywood Reporter, which she ran till 2017. In 2021, as Min recovered from a short stint on the prepare wreck that was Quibi, she and Rushfield began speaking. “The Ankler had come to my consideration as a result of individuals had been forwarding it to me, fairly senior individuals within the trade,” she recollects. “My ideas had been that leisure was present process these loopy upheavals, each culturally and within the enterprise mannequin, and no person was actually proudly owning that dialog.” They made it official with a New York Occasions piece shortly earlier than Christmas and entered the Y Combinator program a number of months later. “In Silicon Valley phrases,” Min stated, “Richard could be ‘the product.’ ”
The Ankler is not any stranger to courtship. Penske Media, whose near-monopoly on main leisure titles consists of THR, Selection, Deadline, Billboard, and Rolling Stone, made plenty of overtures up till a number of weeks earlier than Rushfield and Min introduced their enterprise relationship. (Selection put a proposal on the desk in 2019 so as to add The Ankler to its e-newsletter lineup; later, Penske Media boss Jay Penske pursued an acquisition.) Moreover, Puck had conversations with Rushfield previous to its personal launch. Min and Rushfield later explored partnerships with Axios and Lessin, an early Ankler booster who’d welcomed Rushfield into The Data’s inaugural accelerator program. Ankler Media’s resolution to stay unbiased—albeit with traders—and to proceed publishing on Substack, the place they’re a part of a rising crop of full-fledged publications, mirrored a need to “management our personal future,” as Min put it.
What does The Ankler’s future seem like? Min envisions “a universe of bundled subscriptions” and a push into worldwide markets. “The story of streaming is that it hit the ceiling in america earlier than it was alleged to,” she stated. “So everybody’s saying, ‘Let’s attempt to earn cash someplace else,’ aggressively wanting towards markets like Japan, India, Latin America, and that’s a terrific story.” After I requested for a pie-in-the-sky goal of paid subscribers, she didn’t flinch: “100 thousand.” In the event that they handle to get there—that’s plenty of paying subscribers!—it received’t have been simple. “I believe they’re off to an amazing begin, however the street forward is difficult,” stated Lessin, certainly one of Ankler Media’s traders. “It’s a extremely troublesome, lengthy path.”
In early 2018, Lessin hosted Rushfield and the opposite members of The Data’s first accelerator class at her dwelling in San Francisco. Over dinner, she requested her friends to explain their five-year aspirations. When it was Rushfield’s flip, he stated, “What drew me to newsletters was the prospect to actually write one thing significant and to have the ability to do your finest work. If, 5 years from now, I may very well be doing that on a secure foundation, I’ll be thrilled.”
Right here we’re, 5 years later. I referred to as Rushfield late one night time whereas wrapping up this piece and browse again his quote from Lessin’s soiree. “I couldn’t consider I used to be getting away with talking so truthfully and freely about this trade again then,” he stated. “I nonetheless can’t consider I’m getting away with it.”
HAIR, CHECHEL JOSON (MIN); MAKEUP, TAYLOR BABAIAN; GROOMING, STACY SKINNER; TAILOR, HASMIK KOURINIAN. SET DESIGN, BETTE ADAMS. PRODUCED ON LOCATION BY PRODUCTION SQUAD. FOR DETAILS, GO TO VF.COM/CREDITS.
