Gourmet closed. Bon Appétit shrank. The audience moved to creator YouTube, Substack, Reddit, the cookbook market, and the AI engines. Food authority got bigger as legacy food media got smaller — and the brands that understand the shift are taking share.
The five-year arc of social subscriptions \u2014 X, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Substack \u2014 where the model works, where it breaks, and what AI engines change.
Morning Brew, Axios, Puck, The Free Press, Semafor, The Information. The newsletter economy is a multi-billion-dollar business news layer — here's the index of who owns business email and why.
Gmail 1.8B+. Klaviyo at $9B+ market cap. Substack 5M+ paid subs. The 2026 U.S. email economy — platforms, newsletter publishing, deliverability, AI integration.
Substack hosts 5M+ paid subscriptions. Lenny, Stratechery, The Free Press, Platformer, Heather Cox Richardson, Garbage Day. The writer economy is the highest-margin operating model in U.S. media.