The Scoop
A popular independent lefty American media company is expanding to the United Kingdom.
On Tuesday, Zeteo, the Substack founded by former MSNBC anchor Mehdi Hasan, plans to announce that it is launching Zeteo UK, a standalone site that will begin publishing this week, with a hard launch date in September.
The outlet said it is hiring Shehab Khan, a former host at ITV News, and Becky Gardiner, a former Guardian editor. It’s also bringing on Sangita Myska to host a video podcast series, and hiring a roster of new contributors, including Owen Jones and Peter Oborne.
“The UK, where I was born and raised and first became a journalist, feels like the obvious place for our first international expansion, given the chaos, instability and clear desire for an alternative to the mainstream media,” Hasan said.
Since its launch in 2024, Zeteo has largely focused on American politics and foreign policy. While the outlet is among many independent media voices that have taken a critical view of Donald Trump, Zeteo has staked out an editorial position further to the left on major stories like Israel’s war in Gaza. That has helped grow the outlet’s business: Zeteo says it has more than 650,00 subscribers on Substack and has 2 million YouTube subscribers.
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Zeteo’s expansion into the UK comes as Substack itself has made a growth push in Europe and the United Kingdom specifically.
The company told Semafor that one of every three paid creators on the platform are now based outside the US, a number that had doubled in the past 18 months, and the number of paid subscriptions to UK-based Substackers passed half a million people in May. As of April, the company said European creators now stand to make over $90 million annually on the platform (Substack takes a 10% cut).