How Tangle Turned Political Polarization Into a Profitable Newsletter Business

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In July 2019, Isaac Saul sent a political newsletter to 13 people. He called it The Shuffle and wrote it before dawn while working full time as a politics editor at A Plus, the media company Ashton Kutcher had built around solutions journalism. Saul had spent years covering national politics, including the 2016 presidential race, and Yahoo News later named him one of 16 people who shaped the 2016 election. He grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a bellwether county where his own family argued politics at dinner and landed on different sides of nearly every debate. He believed the national media had stopped representing that kind of disagreement, and he set out to build a publication that would summarize the strongest arguments from the left, the right, and the center on one major political story each day, then add his own verdict at the end.

A week later, Saul renamed the project Tangle and opened it to the public. 130 people signed up, and he set a long-term goal of reaching 10,000 readers, a target that felt ambitious at the time. 7 years on, that list has grown past 500,000 readers across more than 60 countries, and the company built around it now earns millions of dollars a year.

Tangle shows how a narrow editorial constraint can build a durable, profitable media brand inside a market where most competitors chase attention through outrage.

One Story, One Sequence

Every Tangle email follows the same order. The team draws from a running list of more than 100 sources and typically gathers 20-40 pieces of commentary on the day’s story before selecting the arguments it will feature. The newsletter opens with the basic facts stated in neutral language, then presents three arguments from the left and three from the right, chosen to represent the major strands of the debate. Saul writes a section called "My Take," in which he states his view. A staff dissent occurs when a team member substantively disagrees with the argument in My Take. The newsletter also includes a reader question and a set of shorter sections, with features such as Under the Radar, The Extras, and Have a Nice Day rotating from edition to edition. Each issue is designed to take about 10 minutes to read.

Tangle’s value is a repeatable editorial process. The newsletter is built around a fixed structure for gathering and presenting competing arguments, which gives the product consistency regardless of the writer. My Take was not part of the earliest versions Saul shared with friends and family. Readers kept asking where he stood after seeing both sides of an issue, so he added the section. It has since become the newsletter’s most popular feature, according to reader surveys. 

A Business Built on Trust

Tangle runs on what Saul calls an inverted model. Most media companies build a large free audience and monetize it through advertising, chasing scale above all else and treating readers' attention as the product sold to third parties. Tangle keeps roughly 85% of its content free and earns most of its money from the smaller group of readers who pay for the rest. In 2025, the company brought in about $4.15 million in revenue, with roughly $500,000 from advertising placed inside the free newsletter and podcast and the rest from subscriptions. Tangle expects revenue to reach about $6 million in 2026. Subscriptions currently generate more than 90% of revenue, although Saul wants that share to settle closer to 80% as advertising, live events, and video become larger parts of the business. He retains full ownership of Tangle Media LLC and has built the company without outside investment.

The Membership Model Behind Tangle

Readers can subscribe to either the newsletter or the podcast for $59 a year. The $99 Bundle, Tangle’s most popular plan, combines both and includes the Sunday edition, ad-free newsletters, the full audio catalog, and members-only comments. The $199 All In Supporter tier is aimed at readers who want to contribute more to the business. Some early subscribers still pay legacy rates from Tangle’s first years. Advertising runs as plain text in the free edition and does not appear in members-only content.

From Thirteen Readers to a Seven-Figure Business

The climb from that first list of 13 readers took years of compounding. By August 2020, Tangle had grown to 7,000 readers, including 1,000 who paid $50 a year, and Saul told an interviewer that year he believed the newsletter would become a seven-figure business. The podcast launched that same year. Saul left A Plus in April 2021 to run Tangle full time, a year after paid subscriptions launched. A YouTube channel followed in 2023. The mailing list passed 100,000 subscribers in 2024, and by the fifth anniversary that August, the list stood at 125,000, and annual recurring subscription revenue had crossed $1 million. Heading into 2026, Tangle is targeting 795,000 total subscribers and 92,000 paying members, with total revenue expected to reach roughly $6 million.

The Limits of Paid Audience Growth

Tangle's growth has not moved in a straight line. In February 2026, it had about 460,000 daily newsletter subscribers, including 70,000 paid, putting its paid share near 15%, a level the company had maintained for several years. Early in 2026, that rate began to slip as Tangle leaned more heavily on Meta advertising, where it was acquiring new email subscribers for about $1 each. Those readers were inexpensive to acquire but converted to paid subscriptions more slowly than readers coming through other channels. Tangle responded with a direct appeal sent to nearly 400,000 people on its free mailing list, bringing in close to 2,000 new paid members within about 48 hours, while the team continued testing how to convert its Meta audience more effectively. By June 2026, Tangle had about 75,000 paying readers. 

Where Tangle Stands Now

AllSides rates Tangle Center. A July 2025 blind survey of 859 Americans confirmed that rating, while an earlier independent review praised its efforts to avoid loaded word choices on issues such as immigration. By May 2026, Tangle had grown to 12 full-time employees, with subsequent hires expanding the team further. Managing editor Ari Weitzman oversees the newsletter and editorial staff, while the company has also added dedicated roles across sales, product, video, audio, and audience growth. Tangle also produces Suspension of the Rules, a weekly podcast built around looser political discussions, and has begun taking the format into live events that combine debates, audience Q&As, podcast tapings, and VIP dinners. 

Tangle’s advantage comes from the limits it imposed on itself. One major story a day, the strongest arguments from opposing sides, a consistent editorial sequence, and an explicit separation between neutral reporting and Saul’s own view gave readers something recognizable in a crowded political media market. Those constraints made the newsletter easier to understand, easier to trust, and tougher to confuse with competitors chasing the same news cycle. Tangle shows that in a saturated category, narrowing the product's rules can create differentiation that broader coverage cannot.

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*** Every week, we pick apart how the world's best media brands got to where they are. This post is the long read. Growth Curve, our weekly newsletter, is the sharp version: same insight, shorter format, straight to your inbox. Subscribe free here. ***