Breaker Media was launched in February 2025 and covers “the stories that flow through downtown Manhattan — media, power, and culture”, providing “scoops that you can’t get anywhere else”, according to founder Lachlan Cartwright.
“That’s why people will pay for Breaker. And I think that’s what sets us apart, as well as the voice. It’s that cheekiness.”
“I’m probably one of the only people who has worked for Rupert Murdoch, Barry Diller, David Pecker and Jay Penske,” Cartwright said, adding he has “grown up in the tabloids” working across a range of UK and US-based titles.
Cartwright began his career in his homeland Australia at TV network Win TV in Victoria. He moved on to report forThe Sunin London, before heading to the US to join the New York Post,The New York Timesmagazine and New York Daily News. He was executive editor of US Weekly publisher American Media Inc from 2014 to 2017 and in 2018 joined the Daily Beast as editor-at-large. Cartwright was a special correspondent at The Hollywood Reporter in 2024 when he left to found Breaker.
“So I have that mix of sort of highbrow-lowbrow, which kind of comes through in Breaker,” Cartwright said.
Cartwright added Breaker’s tone is “never mean, because mean is for amateurs”.
“But we will, as I like to say, give some of these very high-profile figures a bit of a tickle.”
Cartwright is the only full-time staff member at Breaker, supported by a part-time copy editor and two soon-to-join interns. Lionel Barber, the former editor of theFinancial Times, also contributes a weekly column.
He said the site is already profitable, addinng: “I’m a very lucky bloke [in] that, a year in, I’m earning on par with what I was making in legacy media.”
The site turned a financial corner in the autumn following a “run of big scoops”, hosting its first event and booking “a stellar lineup of guests” for the second season of its podcast.
Source: Press Gazette
