His Newsletter Makes $100K a Year — He Keeps Zero

Seamus Hughes is the terrorism scholar and two-time Pulitzer-winning New York Times contributor behind Court Watch, an independent newsletter that mines the federal court system's 94 districts for stories no one else is covering. Francis talks with him about building a fiercely loyal 10,000-subscriber audience without ads or partisanship, the tactics he uses to find stories inside a deliberately broken records system, and why he trains 1,000+ of his own competitors every year. Read the newsletter: https://www.creatorspotlight.com/profiles __ open.video lets you host your videos on your own domain, under your own brand — so you control the channel, the data, and the direct connection to your viewers. Try it out at https://open.video __ Seamus Hughes - Court Watch: https://www.courtwatch.news - X: https://x.com/SeamusHughes - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seamushughes/ __ Timestamps 00:00 Introducing Seamus Hughes 00:52 Intentionally making less money 06:55 The creator ecosystem falls apart without him 11:00 Growth to 10k subscribers 13:57 Over 500 paying subscribers 16:20 Why this costs $100k to run 31:06 Finding stories within the outdated legal system 38:49 The value of a collective or community