The News
Nika Soon-Shiong’s experience at the Los Angeles Times during the early 2020s hasn’t been that different from that of many progressives in mainstream American newsrooms: She was outspoken about issues that the paper covered, at one point posting on social media criticizing the Times’ coverage of crime; her critique prompted an internal debate; and she eventually stepped back from the paper, as its owner — a billionaire whose businesses depend on federal favor — pulled its opinion coverage slightly to the right.
But Nika Soon-Shiong’s experience was unusual in at least one way: Her dad, Patrick Soon-Shiong, is the Times’ billionaire owner.
The younger Soon-Shiong’s next move offers a glimpse at the generational shifts in American media. She will become the publisher of Drop Site News, a new outlet that has quickly grown a following of nearly 400,000 subscribers since its launch in 2024 with scoops on everything from a Houthi diplomatic signal that helped lead to a ceasefire between the US and the rebels to President Donald Trump’s backchannel attempts to broker peace between Israel and Hamas.
Soon-Shiong, who completed a PhD in economics and international development at Oxford last year, brings “an extraordinary combination of research and media expertise that perfectly aligns with our mission,” Drop Site co-founder Ryan Grim wrote to staff Friday.
“In her new role, Nika will partner with our leadership to expand our impact while preserving our editorial independence. She’ll help us develop new editorial formats, build strategic partnerships with aligned media projects and filmmakers, design innovative audience engagement strategies, and guide our organizational growth.”
In a note to Semafor, Soon-Shiong said she was inspired by the site’s critical coverage of the war in Gaza.
“Drop Site’s small, all-star team proves there’s an audience for investigative journalism that’s transparent, brave, and humane,” she said. “I want nothing more than to grow their impact, because there’s no ceiling. For media institutions that downplayed genocide, ignored apartheid, and fail to cover America’s role in foreign wars — the verdict of history will be merciless.”
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Soon-Shiong’s move comes at a moment of intense energy around expressly left-of-center media, propelled by increasing frustration among progressives, leftists, and even some liberals with the state of the Democratic Party, the ascendancy of the American right, and Israel’s war in Gaza.
New outlets like Drop Site and Zeteo, both launched by alums of The Intercept, have found large and growing audiences on Substack, where they’ve quickly begun generating millions a year in revenue from subscriptions and, in Drop Site’s case, small-dollar donations.
Changing web user habits have also proved helpful: The acceleration of cord-cutting and the growth of news on YouTube has also exposed new audiences to anti-establishment outlets like Zeteo and Breaking Points. The independent journalist Ken Klippenstein, who has broken stories on national security on his eponymous Substack, has seemingly bullied older congressional staffers into doing more media appearances (or resigning from their jobs outright).
Part of the new wave is built around hard-hitting reporting from a perspective on the left. Drop Site has consistently broken news about the war in Gaza, including on the killing of journalists. More Perfect Union, a nonprofit newsroom started by Bernie Sanders campaign alum Faiz Shakir, has dispatched its 35-person staff across the country to highlight stories about inequality and the treatment of workers. And a group of high profile writers this week — including Pankaj Mishra, Mohsin Hamid, Nesrine Malik, Samanth Subramanian, and Suzy Hansen — are launching a new, London-based magazine called Equator “to challenge the reigning assumption that global events should be narrated by and for the West.”
The View From New York
This new generation of outlets has also begun to shape the political conversation on the left, helping boost insurgent challengers to the Democratic establishment. Grim, while at The Intercept in 2018, was an early champion of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.
The New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, in particular, has benefited from the rise of this new ecosystem. One of Mamdani’s first interviews as a candidate was on YouTube show Breaking Points, where he said he would order police to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he came to New York — a declaration that boosted his support with critics of Israel during the Democratic primary, but has also become a contested issue in the general election.
It was a crucial early media moment Mamdani communications adviser Andrew Epstein said it demonstrated how the progressive new media never wrote off Mamdani or treated him as a long shot the way other outlets did.
“Breaking Points, Zeteo and others gave our campaign exposure early on — that was incredibly important. But even more meaningful was the opportunity to have conversations that weren’t premised on the idea that Zohran had a hard ceiling in this race, something journalists and editors from more establishment outlets repeated ad nauseam until the final days of the primary. Being independent and having a systemic critique of corporate media and politics frees you from conventional wisdom that couldn’t comprehend our success.”
Epstein didn’t forget about the early interest from Breaking Points. The YouTube show was one of the only outlets given prime live-streaming real estate at the Mamdani victory party in June, while some other media outlets were given more limited access.
They have increasing purchase among Democratic lawmakers as well, which can occasionally backfire. Earlier this year, Michigan Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s team pitched her to appear on Breaking Points, a YouTube news channel with 1.6 million followers that often takes an anti-establishment view of politics from the populist right and the socialist left (Grim is a co-host of the show). Slotkin struggled through answers as the hosts of the show grilled her about her support for sending weapons to Israel amid its war in Gaza and strikes on targets in the wider Middle East.
Zeteo founder Mehdi Hasan said it’s not a coincidence that candidates like Mamdani, Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Planter, and others have gained popularity at the same moment that the lefty media ecosystem has seen a resurgence.
“There is a kind of parallel: As they rise, we rise, and vice versa, and it’s all about choice,” Hasan told Semafor. “America, the capitalist country, land of choice — there was never really much choice for the lefties.”
Max’s view
Leftist and progressive publications have long cultivated loyal but modest audiences compared to their liberal or center-left peers, whose views have traditionally been reflected in the opinion pages of major papers and on channels like MSNBC and CNN.
In recent years, some smaller, largely talk-focused digital media outlets, including The Young Turks, Majority Report, and Democracy Now have catered to leftist viewers. Publications like The Nation and Jacobin have tended to attract more academic audiences, but have not broken through to shape the mainstream political conversation in the way that right-wing alternative media has helped to reshape the American right for Trump.
This newest generation of independent media outlets seems to borrow elements of both strategies, growing audiences with talk and news show formats on YouTube and fusing it with hard news reporting, in Drop Site’s case, and commentary and criticism in Zeteo’s (though Zeteo, too, has announced plans to do more original reporting).
But perhaps more importantly, they’ve benefited from the vacuum of leadership in the Democratic Party. During the first Trump administration, many left-of-center voters placed faith in the traditional media, believing investigations in The Washington Post, New York Times, and their competitors could reveal scandals that could bring down Trump. Two losses to Trump have left the base fuming and looking for answers that new independent left voices are offering.