Bonnici also described the Substack audience (said to be more than 50 million active subscribers, with five million who pay) as “a robust audience set that is very subscription minded and willing to support journalists and support journalism directly through subscription”.

Rao said Substack was a “complementary part of our broader subscription strategy” and that it has a distinct audience from the main Daily Beast website which means “cannibalisation is not concerning at this point”.