Scott MacFarlane reached a decisive turning point.

Sitting—figuratively—in the chair once occupied by Walter Cronkite at CBS News, it hit him: he could no longer tolerate what legacy media had become.

So he walked away.

Just like that.

Today, instead of working inside a large machine of producers, editors, and even someone assigned to comb his hair, he sits in a home studio with a fabric backdrop he found on Amazon for $8, lit with a flashlight.

I liken Scott MacFarlane to a race horse who’s been set free to run without a jockey, a bit, saddle, or fences to rein him in. He’s flying.

First, he joined Substack—and then the Medias team—about a month ago, and has already attracted more than 56,000 subscribers, with that number continuing to grow. When friends call and ask how he’s doing, his answer is simple: “It’s great.”

Now he has the freedom to tell stories in depth, as often as he likes. And judging by the rush of early subscribers, his success is a testament to something many of us already know: readers and viewers are hungry for straight news—unfiltered, trustworthy, and delivered by a reliable source.

Just like that, we are witnessing yet another example of the democratization of news and information.

From my home office in Des Moines, Iowa, I was able to send a direct message on Substack to a nationally known journalist and invite him onto our local podcast.

He said yes.

I recorded the interview over Zoom on my iMac, dropped the raw footage into iMovie, trimmed a little noise from the beginning, added a touch of music to the intro and outro, created a title card, and voilà—here it is.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Scott MacFarlane described why he left CBS for Substack, arguing that independent media allows him to report with more immediacy, depth, and authenticity than the time-constrained format of legacy broadcast news. He also delivered a stark warning about the unfinished consequences of January 6, the corrosive effects of misinformation and partisan media silos, the pressures shaping the 2026 midterms, and the urgent need to build new models for straight-news journalism that can reach audiences without surrendering to opinion or spectacle.

Subscribe to Scott MacFarlane.

Iowa Writers’ Collaborative

I’m thrilled to be part of a network of professional Iowa writers, each publishing their own independent column on Substack. Together, we’re connecting readers across Iowa with stories that reflect the places they live—from Sioux Center in the northwest to the Quad Cities in the east, and 60 communities in between.

What we’re building is more than a collection of columns—it’s a new model for local journalism, one that is nimble, decentralized, and deeply rooted in place.

We believe this model can work anywhere. Check out the Sunday roundup of columns linked below. If you want to create something similar in another state, or a different kind of collaborative effort on Substack, ask me how we did it.

One more thing…come to the Okoboji Writers’ Retreat, September 27-30.

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