The newsletter’s co-founder and CEO Tim Huelskamp wants 1440 to respond to this shift by becoming a news destination driven by his belief that despite all the hype, readers will not be satisfied in the long term with AI-generated summaries.

“The future of learning is not AI and asking questions, but humans coming together to share knowledge,” Huelskamp said. “Our value argument is not to write explainers and then keep everything on our page and ask them to just read our explanation. Our value argument is that journalists are truly incredible and doing the work of their lives, spending months and sometimes years producing these wonderful articles and no one can find them… Someone has to be the connective tissue of the industry.”

1440 has generated 4.5 million newsletter subscribers through its model of curating information in areas such as politics, business, science and culture in a quick, digestible format, monetized through advertising and sponsorships. It now wants to go beyond just the newsletter product and direct its newsletter audiences to landing pages on its own site, where they can get the information they’re looking for for free from a trusted source and monetize the content with advertising..

The explainers, called Topics, were launched last October. There are now over 200 pages of topics in categories such as Business & Finance, Science & Technology, Health & Medicine, World History, and Society & Culture. The goal is to get to 10,000 subjects, Huelskamp said. Since February, the Topics website has attracted more than 4.3 million unique visitors, 18 million page views and an average session length of six minutes, according to Huelskamp.

1440 didn’t have to get into the search SEO traffic game because of its built-in newsletter audience, and now leverages this channel to drive those readers directly to its own website. 1440 did not immediately provide traffic figures.

“One of the reasons all of these companies are moving to newsletters is because they need that direct relationship with the customer. We’ve had that from the start, and now it’s an advantage we can capitalize on,” Huelskamp said. “We reflect over time, [Topics will] Naturally increases SEO, but we don’t count on that because then you take a back seat to direct traffic. We are looking at [our] general public.

This investment in Topics marks a repositioning of the 1440 brand from a newsletter-only product to a news database — a strategy Huelskamp sees as vital to remaining competitive in the AI ​​era. 1440 has worked with Giant Spoon on repositioning its brand, said Michelle Denhart, vice president of strategy and brand at 1440. So far, brands like Fidelity, Oura Ring, Fisher Investments and Apple Card have sponsored topic pages, according to Huelskamp. The initiative is already “in the black,” Huelskamp said (the Daily Digest has been profitable for three years).]

According to Katherine Cartwright, co-founder of media buying agency Criterion Global, 1440’s change in business is also an incentive to increase its revenue opportunities at a competitive time for the newsletter industry. It also means more inventory for advertisers (and revenue opportunities for 1440) and better contextual alignment around topic categories, she said.

Google is moving in the same direction. NotebookLM, its AI research and note-taking assistant, partnered this summer with publishers like The Economist and The Atlantic to create databases of information that users can access to explore certain topics, asking questions and reading articles.

“Reliable content is eagerly sought after now that news and information can be so easily falsified. [1440’s] It makes perfect sense to create more sustainable and visible content. They ticked three important boxes: there is value for their existing subscribers, value for their business and value for advertisers,” said Claire Russell, head of media at advertising agency Fitzco.

In-Depth Topic Curators

1440 will launch free user accounts so readers can share, like and save topic pages to build their own information libraries, according to Huelskamp. These features are currently being tested and will likely be rolled out by the first quarter of 2026, he said. Readers will also be able to download suggested resources for possible inclusion on the Topics pages. All content will be verified by the 1440 team, Huelskamp noted.

A “curator” is assigned a specific vertical and analyzes reader comments, engagement data, and cultural or timely events to determine what topic to write about next. For example, the “Steven Spielberg” theme page was put online for the 50th anniversary of Spielberg’s film “Jaws.” They also look at trending topics on Google Search, Reddit, and Wikipedia.

Each topic page includes a written summary at the top, visual explanations, and a few sentences compiling information from outside sources (such as PBS, The New Yorker, and the Library of Congress). Terms range from cryptocurrency to national debt and biohacking. Huelskamp aims to recruit 30-40 in-depth editors and curators to expand into the travel, space, food and culture categories over the next 18 months. Currently, 1440 has five full-time editors dedicated to the topics.

It helps that 1440 already has a newsletter audience that it can try to push to its Topics pages. Its Daily Digest now has a section dedicated to new topic pages. 1440’s basic advertising business model generates about $20 million in revenue annually, Huelskamp said. His newsletter has an open rate of 65%, with a “double-digit” click-through rate, he said.

“Maybe it’s [1440’s] second chapter where they try to specialize and [figure out]how can we keep these eyes within our properties and monetize accordingly? I think this is a compelling evolution of the newsletter-driven campaign,” Cartwright said.