Mehdi Hasan’s Zeteo wants to take on Politico Playbook from the left

Later this month, Zeteo is launching a morning political newsletter written from a progressive perspective. It hopes to fill a gap in a morning news landscape that has largely been dominated by down-the-middle link roundups and tipsheets like those sent out daily by Politico, Axios, Punchbowl News, and Semafor, among others.

The organization is bringing on Peter Rothpletz to write the morning newsletter most weekdays, while Hasan will author the Monday morning edition.

The move is part of an expansion the publication is making to gear up for the midterm elections. Hasan told Semafor that Zeteo’s coverage of Israel and the war in Gaza has defined the publication’s early output and helped distinguish it from outlets that he felt were often overly deferential to Israel. But he said there was a large amount of audience interest in the publication’s political coverage. Major political events such as Trump’s election have corresponded with spikes in Zeteo subscriptions, he said.

Zeteo has also hired several political reporters from Rolling Stone, including Andrew Perez and Asawin Suebsaeng, who told Semafor he was “proud to be joining another team that actutely understands both the assignment and the stakes.”

“Our subscribers want political coverage that is informed, that breaks stories, and that isn’t afraid to call out the people in power. Independent journalism cannot afford to be defined only by the ‘hot take’ factories out there and so we at Zeteo are proud to be investing in old-fashioned reporting and investigative journalism,” he said. “Asawin and Andrew are known and respected across our industry for their scoops and their sources, including in Trumpworld, and the fact that they want to join Zeteo ahead of a crucial election year tells you everything about our momentum and direction of travel.”

Hasan told Semafor that the publication, just over a year old, would cross 500,000 total subscribers on Substack within the next few weeks; more than 50,000 of them pay monthly or annually. The publication has also leaned heavily into YouTube, where it posts 4-5 videos a week, and has over 1.2 million subscribers.