Meet Our Newest Contributors: Zeteo is Expanding!

Prem Thakker, Kat Abughazaleh and Justin Baragona join the team, as we continue to hold power to account

Dear Zeteo subscribers, 

I’m excited to announce that Zeteo is expanding!

We have only been around for less than four months, we’re still a small and scrappy enterprise, but we have great ambitions. Our goal, our plan, is to transform our media, both here at home and abroad - and we’ve already made a big impact, through our weekly streaming show, bi-weekly podcast and multiple high-profile contributors from around the world. We have broken very big stories and secured world-exclusive interviews. 

But we can’t do any of this without all of you: our subscribers, our supporters, our Zeteo community. And as I have said before, a free press isn’t free!

Your paid subscriptions help us grow and recruit new talent. So, thanks to your generous financial support, I’m delighted to unveil three new contributors to the Zeteo team:

Prem Thakker joins Zeteo as our first full-time reporter. Prem will be Zeteo’s new political correspondent, reporting from the White House and Capitol Hill, but also writing a must-read weekly column, ‘Abuse of Power.’ Prem joins us from The Intercept, where he regularly went viral while grilling State Department spokesman Matthew Miller on U.S. support for Israeli war crimes in Gaza. On Wednesday, Prem hits the ground running for us, as he’ll be covering Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial address to Congress.

Kat Abughazaleh joins Zeteo as a video creator based in Washington DC, and her new segment is called ‘Vibe Check’. She started her career at Media Matters for America, monitoring dangerous narratives at Fox News. Her video explainers about the media and politics have gained tens of millions of views across TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. You may have seen her recent video essay for Zeteo highlighting a prominent Trump ally who wants to “execute” Democrats and ban Muslims.

Justin Baragona joins Zeteo as our media columnist, having made a name for himself as a prolific scoop-getter at the Daily Beast where he was a senior media reporter. You should look out for Justin’s take on the right-wing media’s latest manufactured outrage, what mainstream media is ignoring or getting wrong, original reporting and much more, in his uncompromising style. His new ‘Ragebait’ newsletter for Zeteo will appear every other week, on Wednesdays, and you can subscribe to it here. 

These are the three new names on the Zeteo roster - to add to Naomi Klein, Bassem Youssef, Owen Jones, Fatima Bhutto and many more. But we want to get bigger and even better; we want Zeteo to be able to continue investing in new talent.

So, I want to ask again for your support - if you’re a free subscriber, please consider becoming a paid subscriber today (for less than the cost of a cup of coffee every month!).

And if you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you so much for your immense support. If you’d like to help Zeteo even further, and have the means to do so, you can upgrade to become a Founding member.

I appreciate you all. Let’s keep fighting the good fight together!

Best,

Mehdi

Founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of Zeteo