Mic Wright on masterminding the most feared newsletter in journalism

I speak to one of my favourite Substackers on his one-man mission to hold the media accountable

Were I a columnist I would live in fear of ending up on Mic Wright’s Substack, Conquest of the Useless, on which he publishes brilliantly withering pieces of media criticism across the political spectrum. 

Rigorous and fair analysis meet mischievously crude humour, with some of Britain’s most ubiquitous columnists earning their own kind of hilarious folklore — as I type this I can recall some of Mic’s vividly imaginative metaphors for a handful of them, always somehow preposterous and completely on the money at the same time. (I won’t name and shame but browse through his archive and you’ll see.)

Following Twitter’s undoing, Conquest of the Useless has become one of the very few sensible places where some of Britain’s most influential writers – who regularly trade in misinformation or deranged and inflammatory comment – can be held accountable. Since he launched the newsletter in 2020, his end-of-year wrap of the worst columnists of the year has become event journalism.

Beyond dismantling columnist delusion, Mic has written about everything from how the New Statesman was complicit in Russell Brand’s ‘revolutionist’ makeover to the ways in which the British press tackles hot button topics such as the NHS. This piece on the disturbing way British newspapers report on killers is particularly good.

But by sticking his head above the parapet and calling out some of the most powerful people in journalism, Mic’s job can be rather fraught to say the least, from weathering regular Twitter hate to fretting about potential legal woes. Which makes him a fascinating person to speak to for this newsletter, I hope you enjoy our interview below. 

Why did you decide to burn your bridges with the mainstream media and start Conquest of the Useless?

I think what people in the media who really dislike me would say is, ‘Well, he did this because no one would hire him anymore’, which is not true. Really the reason I think I ended up wanting to write media criticism was when I talked to people who are outside of the business, they were frustrated, and felt like they were being gaslit by an entire industry. So I knew there was an audience.

And I’m not anti-mainstream media. I had this thing where [the Sun’s political editor] Harry Cole had a go at me on Twitter because he saw me outside the Red Lion in Westminster and claimed that I was ‘hiding’ from him, which is hilarious, but then Politico London Playbook describe me as ‘mainstream media hater Mic Wright’ which is just not true.

I think a lot of the people who like my newsletter know that I have an understanding of how a newspaper, magazine, TV show or podcast is put together. I started journalism with a ‘proper’ job when I left university, at Pensions World Magazine (because all of the cool magazines that offered the jobs didn't want to give me the money and I couldn't afford to work for free). Then I worked at Q Magazine, and then I was on retainer for the Telegraph, doing stuff for Telegraph Men and Tech and the comment desk. So I’ve been around the industry.

I love British journalism, I just think a lot of it is really bad. It’s interesting to me the level of behaviour you can get away with off the page, and for your employer to be happy with that. It's bizarre to me that there are certain people within our industry who seem to be able to do things that to my mind would be gross misconduct. To what level are you allowed to embarrass the paper?

How much hate do you get from the people you roast in some of your newsletters?

What is really interesting is how much the sort of centrist, pseudo Left really can’t handle criticism. I have received some really mad emails from columnists and writers at those Leftist places. They really can’t handle it.

Someone at the Times wrote a Twitter thread about how I only write the newsletter because I'm a failure or whatever, but generally, the smart people pretend I don't exist and that nothing I say or do matters. That's what I would do. I know a lot of senior editors read it because they sign up with their corporate email.

Someone who I have to give credit to for just taking it, and responding positively even though I've been super critical of him, because I really don’t like the ‘tethered goat’ thing LBC does where they get a stupid caller on so the host can appear cleverer, is James O'Brien. He's a paid subscriber to the newsletter and has had me on his show a number of times.

What was interesting when I did the journalism Nepo Babies Map was that there were certain people who appeared on it who were just cool with everything about it. And it made me think so much more kindly of them. Hugo Rifkind handled it really well and sent me a nice message about it. Archie Bland at the Guardian was very sound about it. But there were people – columnists – who I haven’t even really written about but who have tweeted very extensively about me. I won’t name them because they’ll enjoy it too much. 

What is the ‘process’ behind the worst columns of the year round-up?

The process is more that I get a sense across the year of the columnists that have annoyed me the most – and sometimes the ones that have provoked the most correspondence from readers – and go back through what they’ve produced over the year. I then select one or two of the best worst examples and try to order them. Then I check their positions against last year’s list and write a little blurb for each one. The whole exercise is made slightly easy by the fact that I write Byline Times’ Bad Press Awards in the summer and now have a regular Byline column on the same topic. 

Any of the columnists you select got in touch?

No. The only time I’ve interacted with one of the nominees was Giles Coren late last year when he Tweeted me to assure me he and his wife did not intentionally park in a disabled space as the Mail had claimed. I now know he’s read what I’ve written about him in the past as he said, “I know you have a very low opinion of me, but…”

Do you have many legal issues?

I'm just cautious – if it's risky I seek legal advice. And I try to stick to what I believe is fair comment. I'm also a pretty good, fast researcher and have a good memory of what has been said in the past. Or if it’s a complex investigation then I would write it for somewhere like The Byline Times. I really love working with editors. The copy editor at Perspective Magazine who edits my column is called Belinda Bamber and she's the best line editor I've ever worked with.

You’ve been working on a journalism MeToo expose – how is that going?

I'm still working on that. And it's quite complicated. I did part one with the Byline Times. But these organisations have such massive legal firepower, we weren’t able to publish everything. Hopefully I will get more evidence. The frustrating thing is that after I wrote about the media and Nick Cohen, I hoped it would prompt more people to come forward, but it didn’t really. The problem is that if a household name gets you on a defamation suit or whatever then it can be ruinous. 

Do you have sources at newspapers?

Yeah. It's interesting how people out of the blue will email me things. I mean sometimes it’s frustrating because I can’t reveal how I know some of the things I know, or I don’t have enough on something to say it, and I don’t want to expose a source because I’m very conscious of people not losing their jobs. 

What has been your most fulfilling journalistic achievement? 

Well, there's something I wrote years ago for the Telegraph around the time that there was the spate of scammers pretending to be women getting young men to do stuff on camera, and then being like, you need to send me money or I will release this to everyone. Many young men took their own lives over that. And I wrote a thing saying, you know, no level of shame is worth it. I got a lot of meaningful emails in response.

Similarly, there was an unrepentant paedophile that I wrote about for Telegraph Blogs who ended up being recalled to jail in part because of some stuff I worked on. Though what was pretty rank was that he stalked me online for ages and would comment on everything I did.

More recently, the story I ended up breaking about the Night Volunteers being unfairly arrested. I do like to get out there and do some shoe-leather reporting, just to show those people that say ‘what does he know about journalism?’ that yes, I can do journalism, I don’t just write commentary.

Has there been a piece that proved so stressful you regretted writing it?

Not from the newsletter, but there are things I would take back from when I was writing comment stuff in my early 20s. For instance, I wrote about getting assaulted in a pub, and my editors were very keen for me to write that without properly thinking, ‘is it good for a relatively young person to have a picture of them having been beaten up on the internet with a fairly quick reaction to their emotional experience from that?’ No is the answer, because what happens is when a group of people later decide they don’t like you, you know, on Twitter, they can use that picture of me having been beaten up, and post it everywhere. That has been really grim. 

And then also, I suppose also with the Nepo Baby map, I thought it would just go around my corner of Twitter and not much further. But it went everywhere, and while I was quite happy with it in some ways it was also a lot of hassle which I probably could have done without. And I think a lot of people missed the point, which was not so much personal but a point about the systemic problems of the industry. Ridiculously, people were even criticising the fact it wasn’t a proper map: ‘It’s not even a map, it’s a simple diagram’.

Who are your subscribers, broadly speaking?

I would say that about 60% are people who are very engaged with the media and fairly to the Left, the other 40% are top editors, presenters, columnists, people like that. Then some companies, because when I lived in Ireland I used to do media training for big accounting firms.

Are you financially independent from your Substack alone?

It's not my only income, but it's a good portion of it. After about two months of writing it, I realised it was worth maybe two pieces of freelance writing a month. And then it took about a year and a half to really motor, which I credit to building up the volume – writing a newsletter a day. It’s decent now, and I only write two newsletters a week, but I don't make insane money. I also write a column for Perspective magazine, and I write for The Byline Times. 

Do you make more money now than when you were on staff somewhere? 

For a brief time I worked for a software company, when I took a little break from journalism, and I made very good money there, so I haven’t matched that. But I probably make the equivalent to like a staff wage at a paper.

How much has the newsletter improved your commissioning rate? 

I mean obviously I won’t get commissioned by national newspapers, but otherwise, it's better. I do more interesting work. My career has had a lot of ups and downs. Working at Q Magazine for nine months was one of the most depressing jobs I’ve ever had, and when I left I wrote a lot of bios and did a lot of ghost-writing, because I got on so well with PR people. That was pretty good money-wise, but I was a journalist with an ego and I missed the byline. Perspective is great because it’s essentially run by rich people who just really love making a magazine. I also do quite a bit for American outlets. And I wouldn’t have got my book deal without the newsletter.

How did you get your agent?

My friend Ian Winwood, who wrote Bodies, asked me if I had an agent, and introduced me to Curtis Brown, where I met with Cathryn Summerhayes for a kind of ‘vibes check’. I told her I wanted to write a media book, and she said, I can sell that, and told me exactly how to write a proposal. Bonnier Publishing picked up the book, which is called Breaking News: How the Media Works and Why It Doesn't. So it’s sort of what the newsletter is about, but more bookishly put.

What is your average day like?

I like to spend the morning reading a tonne of stuff, doing emails, listening to the Today programme, Times Radio and LBC. Then I spend the rest of the morning doing a lot of writing. I make tonnes of drafts of ideas that I don't end up writing.

At lunchtimes I go on Twitch and do a show called The Paper Thing, where I have a hardcore audience of between 1 and 200 people who watch every day, and that’s great because it allows me to feel like I’m not just a guy in a room. It’s very interactive. I essentially just read the papers with them; it probably makes a couple of hundred pounds a month or maybe even less. 

What are your journalistic pet peeves?

The word seminal is one, it feels very blokeish. ‘Sophomore’ album. When the tabloids say he or she ‘blasted’ someone else, and the one I hate the most is “they took to Facebook or took to Twitter”.  And of course 'flaunts' is a classic. 

What do you think of today’s music criticism?

I think star ratings on reviews are problematic because editors count up star ratings and they say oh we have too many 3s, or too many 5s, or not enough 5s. It should be OK to say, there were simply no five-star records this year. And then of course there are issues with journalists bumping things up because they were driven around in Bono's Porsche, for instance, which led to a five-star U2 review when it was absolutely not five star. 

I think independent criticism is where it's going. I mean someone like Anthony Fantano is great because he built his own thing on YouTube and can buy his own records and say whatever he likes. I believe his reviews. 

I think The Quietus still publishes honest reviews. I write for them occasionally. The first time I got into Pseuds Corner in Private Eye was for my Arctic Monkeys AM review. But I hate Pseuds Corner, and the idea that basically anyone trying to do anything new or interesting is seen as pretentious. 

Do you ever read criticism of yourself?

I really try and avoid name searching, but you know, if you want to get on the field and get smashed around, then that’s what is going to happen. I comment on the work of others, so they’re going to comment on mine. But what I have tried to do recently is to be less personally insulting, which I was at the start of the newsletter because I was just so blocked off with the world, to be honest. Now I focus on the angle rather than the person. Though I have to say that what I find more difficult than aggressive feedback is when someone who goes, ‘I’m just really sad that we have to disagree’, which is what Danny Finkelstein used to say when he used to be a subscriber. Just very powerful passive aggression. An unbearable smugness. 

Who is a rising star we should all take notice of?

I mean he’s not really a rising star but I think someone who is really in his stride is Patrick Maguire at the Times, and he's so connected with Labour that if Labour win the next election then he will become unmissable in terms of political journalism. Also he's northern, which is good!

What newspapers or magazines do you pay for?

Classic Pop Magazine, The New York Times because I love the Athletic. I also think Sky News Daily is one of the best, and the Bristol Cable is excellent and a really good model for the future of local journalism, even though I don't live in Bristol.

And on Substack?

I love Read Max by Max Read, and Today in Tabs, which is a really good way to keep up with stuff happening on the internet. Also, Hung Up by Hunter Harris, and After School by Casey Lewis.

How many Substacks do you pay for?

About 15, including people I absolutely hate, like Dominic Cummings and David Aaronovitch. Sorry.

Thanks for reading! Go and subscribe to Mic’s Substack here, and follow him on Twitter, here.