Bari Weiss' Free Press keeps getting better and better. 

The business model, if you could call it that, is pretty simple: scoop up all the best of the liberal to moderate refugees from the increasingly totalitarian progressive media outlets and give them a home to do real journalism. 

It's so good that I subscribed to it even before it officially existed--back when it was Bari Weiss' Substack. It has only gotten better since then. 

Thrilled to welcome @uberliner to @TheFP. pic.twitter.com/9rComHZ6on

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) June 25, 2024

Bari has just scooped up Uri Berliner, the recently fired National Public Radio Business editor. 

Berliner burned his bridges with NPR by writing a piece on how the news organization lost its way in the Trump years. All of us here at Hot Air wrote something about this story, but Ed wrote the definitive piece on Berliner's original essay. 

Bari is, of course, a refugee from The New York Times, as is her wife. Uri comes from NPR. Catherine Herridge, who just wrote a piece about her struggle to protect a source, was let go from CBS. 

You get the idea. The mainstream media is shedding the last few journalists they have been employing, and the Free Press is picking up the best of the lot. 

The Free Press is distinctive in a number of ways, both from its Substack......competitors? Siblings? ...Fellow travelers? and from the MSM.

Whatever you call them, there are a number of Substack writers who are doing similar types of reporting--independent reporting on topics about which they are most interested and interesting. I subscribe to a number of them.

But what makes The Free Press distinct is that it has become a home for a stable of writers, some of whom do enterprise reporting and others who do more regular columns. This makes the subscription a very good deal compared to the Substacks with one or two people doing all the heavy lifting. You get more, and more diverse, content. I am starting to get loaded up on subscriptions, and it's hard to keep track of them, and while having 2 or 4 doesn't hurt the pocketbook, having 10 or 12 adds up fast. 

The one thing that The Free Press and the other independent journalism sites don't have is the breadth of coverage that the MSM is uniquely capable of doing. 

There are hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure invested in the MSM journalistic enterprise and those resources are necessary to cover the news worldwide. Unfortunately all that investment has been perverted to promote a narrative, not provide actual news coverage on any issue that touches on politics, science, or almost anything else we care about. 

Sites like The Free Press are wonderful, but a healthy mainstream media is necessary to ensure that people living in liberal democracies can be well-informed. Relatively few people are interested in deep-dive reporting and in-depth commentary; they just need to know the basics, and nobody is providing a reliable source of news. 

Jake Tapper has compared Trump to Hitler many times. He has a serious case of TDS.
Unfortunately for Trump he is moderating the CNN debate this week.
See the video
👇👇👇👇👇👇 pic.twitter.com/a3H9zxEtjW

— TL Rttn (@rttn_tl) June 24, 2024

A perfect example--one among many--is the fact that CNN is allowing Dana Bash and Jake Tapper to pretend to be nonpartisan journalists and having them moderate a political debate between Trump and Biden. Both are fatally compromised. 

Reminder: CNN debate moderator Dana Bash's husband, Jeremy Bash, was one of the 51 IC members who signed onto the infamous Hunter Biden hoax letter pic.twitter.com/NZ8oVVCUoH

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) June 25, 2024

Tapper has routinely compared Trump to Hitler, and both have pushed hoaxes about Trump. 

We need strong independent media, and I am thrilled to see The Free Press keep expanding and scooping up talent. 

But we also need a healthy and objective mainstream media, and that is certainly not going to be available any time soon.