How journalist Judd Legum’s 'Popular Information' grew into a corporate accountability powerhouse

Legum shares his methodical approach to reporting, the power of free access to information, and why he's expanding his coverage to monitor the ultrawealthy.

Photo courtesy of Judd Legum

When Judd Legum launched Popular Information in 2018, the newsletter landscape looked vastly different. Substack was in its infancy and the idea of a solo journalist building a sustainable media operation through reader subscriptions seemed uncertain at best.

Seven years later, Legum's approach to what he calls "independent accountability journalism" has not only proven financially viable, but genuinely consequential — sparking corporate policy changes that have improved working conditions for hundreds of thousands of employees and influencing how companies approach political donations.

What makes Legum's work distinctive isn't just its impact but its methodology. After years editing ThinkProgress (which he founded) and a stint as research director for Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, Legum developed a knack for the kind of meticulous, database-driven research that larger outlets often find too time-consuming.

He’s yielded remarkable results with this approach. His reporting secured paid sick leave for 175,000 restaurant workers and prompted dozens of corporations to reconsider their political donations following the January 6 U.S. Capitol attack.

Unlike many subscription newsletters, Popular Information makes its reporting available without a paywall, operating with the mission that accountability journalism should reach the widest possible audience. "If you're going to hold people accountable," Legum tells Depth Perception, "you really want as many people as possible to know about what those powerful people are doing."

In recent years, Legum has shifted his focus beyond politicians to what he sees as an even more consequential concentration of power: the ultrawealthy individuals reshaping our information landscape, economy, and democracy. With the recent launch of Musk Watch, a spinoff newsletter focused on Elon Musk, Legum is expanding his model to a broader oligarch watch — recognizing that in today's power structures, individual billionaires often wield more influence than elected officials.

In this edition of Depth Perception, we speak with Legum about the evolution of his newsletter, the challenges of accountability journalism in a hostile media environment, and why methodical research can still break through the noise. —Parker Molloy

Can you tell me a little bit about Popular Information and how it came into existence?

It started in 2018 in the summer. It was an earlier Substack newsletter — of course, there were plenty of newsletters before that, but Substack was just getting started.

I was working at and editing ThinkProgress at the time, which was the media arm of the Center for American Progress. It had gotten fairly successful, and as a result, we had been able to add more and more people. What I realized is that I was no longer able to do any of the things that I actually like to do — the writing, the researching, the reporting. I was helping other people deal with their issues, editing their pieces, and helping them work through different problems, which can be rewarding in its own way. But for me personally, I wanted to get back to the work. So I was attracted to this idea of starting what, for the first few years, was a solo newsletter, so that I would be focusing most of my time on that.

Can you tell me a little bit about your own professional background?

After college, I went to law school. I'm not really sure why, but I went to law school. I didn't have much interest in journalism or anything like that, but I was interested in politics. So I decided to come back to the Washington, D.C. area — I'm from Maryland — to Georgetown, with the idea that I wanted to get involved in politics.

I ended up being the research assistant for John Podesta, who was a professor there at the time. He was Bill Clinton's last chief of staff and has been in most of the Democratic administrations. As I was graduating, he was starting the Center for American Progress, so he hired me without really any specific position. At the time, it was a very small organization, and they were starting a newsletter called the Progress Report. That was interesting to me — this was the beginning of the democratization of the media space.

From there, I got involved in blogs and the blogosphere. That's when I came up with the idea for ThinkProgress. That grew, and running it was mostly my professional career up until I started Popular Information. But I did take a brief detour for a few years — I was the research director for Hillary Clinton's first presidential campaign in 2008. I also practiced law for a couple of years and ran for office myself in Maryland, where I'm from, and then decided that wasn't really for me and went back to ThinkProgress.

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You've described Popular Information as "independent accountability journalism." What does accountability journalism mean to you in 2025, and how has your definition evolved since launching the newsletter in 2018?

Accountability journalism to me means identifying people or organizations that have a significant amount of power and then trying to hold them accountable for things that they are doing, either by uncovering those things or highlighting those things.

I do think it's different than when we started this nearly seven years ago, in that the loci of power have changed. We did a lot on individual politicians, and I'm sure we'll continue doing that. But I think they're less important than some of these very rich, powerful individuals that are outside of politics, in corporations and elsewhere. There's probably less focus on individual politicians than there has been.

If you had to identify the biggest threat to accountability journalism right now, what would it be?

I think there is a concerted effort — I think it's part of the right-wing movement generally, but specifically the Trump administration — to threaten and intimidate journalists. That's the biggest obstacle standing in the way.

Even the basic protections like New York Times v. Sullivan and things that prevent you from getting sued just for writing something critical, even if it's true, those are up in the air right now.

Popular Information has directly influenced corporate behavior — from securing paid sick leave for 175,000 restaurant workers to prompting companies to suspend donations to election deniers. What's your process for identifying which corporate practices to investigate, and how do you balance newsworthiness with the potential for real-world change?

Those are maybe two of my bigger successes, but you don't always know what's going to work. Sometimes you're just giving it a try. I think that's still valuable work — if you write on something that's important, it doesn't always have an impact, but it's still important, and maybe it will have an impact down the line.

I think it's about being a student of the political environment, understanding where new sensitivities might arise. The issue with Darden restaurants, which is the owner of Olive Garden and other chains, was right as the pandemic was starting. There became essentially a new sensitivity among customers — it was as the pandemic was starting, but before everyone was just quarantining. People were still going out but were more concerned about getting sick, although not so concerned that they weren't going to restaurants.

I identified that and asked: What is the largest chain that isn't providing paid sick leave? I talked to a lot of different workers there, and that had an impact. So understanding the political environment, seeing where there might be new vulnerabilities, and then choosing corporations to focus on that might be particularly sensitive to those vulnerabilities.

A consumer-facing corporation is going to be a lot more sensitive to unfavorable media attention than a company like Lockheed Martin. Lockheed has a very limited set of people to keep happy — namely, Congress and the Department of Defense. They don't necessarily care that much if people like them. A place like Olive Garden, where people need to make a decision every Friday about where they're going to go out to eat, is much more vulnerable to public opinion.

“Accountability journalism to me means identifying people or organizations that have a significant amount of power and then trying to hold them accountable for things that they are doing, either by uncovering those things or highlighting those things.” —Judd Legum

These investigations often seem to involve research that other outlets might find too time-consuming. Is this methodical approach deliberate, and how do you determine when you've gathered enough material to publish?

It is deliberate in the sense that I think that's where my skill set is. I didn't really start out necessarily knowing I was going to do it that way, but it was sort of through trial and error. Having gone to law school, being familiar with that kind of research, having done the Hillary Clinton campaign and just being very familiar with political research and all the different databases — and then making some investments in getting access to databases — that's where I feel like we have an edge.

I spend time with the people I hire to make sure they know how to use all those databases. It is part of our strategy to look for opportunities to do that kind of research.

I think you have enough to publish when you've uncovered something that you know is true. Usually, I want either a primary source or, if I have secondary sources, I want two or three things that all connect to each other and are telling me the same story before I publish. And then you need to have uncovered something that's going to be novel or interesting to people.

We do a lot of projects that never see the light of day. We might spend hours or weeks on them, and at the end, we find there's nothing really that interesting that we've uncovered, and we just move on. That's part of the process, and I try to encourage everyone that that's okay — you don't feel like you've just wasted your time; it just didn't work out.

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Unlike many subscription publications, Popular Information isn’t behind a paywall. What led you to this approach, and what have you learned about why readers are willing to pay for something they could technically access for free?

I actually did have a paywall for a little while after I launched, up until early 2020. It was really the pandemic, when I started doing a lot of reporting around workers who were exposing themselves to danger, that changed things. With everything going on, it just felt wrong to paywall that information — like you could only find out about these exploited workers if you were willing to pay me $50 a year. I thought, "this is gross." So I took away the paywall.

From ThinkProgress to Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign to Popular Information, your career has had several distinct chapters. Which experiences most shaped your approach to journalism today?

I think it's all had a role, but I learned a lot when I was on the Clinton campaign. Part of my role was to talk to journalists and to essentially pitch them the research and stories that I was coming up with. I got an understanding of both what was considered newsworthy and what would get you prominent placement.

That process taught me what's considered newsworthy and what isn't, but also revealed some gaps — things that are interesting but that no one will write about because they're just seen as "well, this is the way things are done."

A lot of the stories that have done well in Popular Information have been about campaign donations, the way workers are treated — things that, especially in DC-oriented publications, are often dismissed with a sense of "well, this is just the way things are done; this isn't news." That experience gave me some insight into where the gaps might be. As an independent newsletter writer, you're not the AP — you're trying to fill gaps.

What story or investigation are you most proud of and why?

I think probably the one that I think about the most involves a Native American woman named Mika Westwolf, who was killed on the side of the road in Montana. Basically, there was very little being done. They knew who did it, and that person was arrested, but then there was just very little progress. The family reached out to me and told me their story.

The process of exposing how the investigation had stalled and was turning attention to blaming the victim, and just giving that a little bit of exposure outside of the typical places, kind of putting a spotlight on the people involved that they maybe weren't expecting — ultimately, they did do a real investigation, and the woman [responsible] was charged and sentenced. Bringing some justice to that situation is probably the one that was most meaningful to me personally.

What new developments or expansions can readers expect from Popular Information in the coming years?

This year, I started a spinoff called Musk Watch, and that's been pretty successful. I hired someone to be the main writer, Caleb, and he's doing a good job. So I may continue to delve into that model.

Obviously, Musk is one person, but there are other similarly situated people. I started Musk Watch because I thought Musk was a one-of-one, and I think that intuition sort of proved correct, especially in these first few months. But I also think that there are other similarly situated people who are basically conducting themselves in almost the same way. As part of identifying loci of power, I think there's more to be done in that area.

Further reading from Judd Legum

• “Why Qatar is bribing Trump” (Popular Information, May 13, 2025)

• “The war on free speech” with Rebecca Crosby and Noel Sims (Popular Information, May 6, 2025)

• “In botched DEI purge, OSHA trashes workplace safety guidelines” with Rebecca Crosby (Popular Information, Feb. 17, 2025)

• “10 corporations that kept their promises after January 6, 2021” with Rebecca Crosby and Noel Sims (Popular Information, Jan. 7, 2025)

• “Proof that change is possible” (Popular Information, Aug. 9, 2021)