When I started Hack Spirit in 2016, something interesting happened.
I was not a journalist. I had neither a press badge nor a media company behind me. I had a psychology degree, a warehouse job I had recently quit, and a need to write about things that really mattered to me.
And people read. Millions of them, eventually.
At first I didn’t quite understand why. But the more I thought about it and the more I observed what was happening in the media right now, the more clear the answer became.
People aren’t just looking for information. They are looking for someone they can truly trust.
This is the quiet revolution happening in how we consume content. And research is starting to back it up. Research on media trust consistently shows that audiences are moving away from major institutional outlets not because they have become anti-information, but because they are looking for something those institutions have difficulty providing: a real human voice with a real point of view.
This is not a contradiction. This is not some fringe movement. It is a fundamentally different relationship with information—one based on voice and trust rather than institutional authority.
Let’s explore why.
1) Mainstream media optimizes for reach, not resonance
That’s the thing about major media outlets: they have to appeal to everyone. This means that in practice they often don’t resonate deeply with anyone.
When you write for millions of undifferentiated readers, you lower the margins. You avoid strong thoughts. You hedge. You balance. You present “both sides” even when both sides are not equal. The result is technically accurate but emotionally empty content.
Independent bloggers don’t have that problem.
When someone sits down to write a personal blog post, they aren’t thinking about the sensibilities of the advertiser or editorial committees. They write what they really think. And readers can feel the difference immediately.
There’s a difference between reading a restaurant review from a food critic who should maintain a professional distance and getting a text from a friend who just ate there. Same information, completely different attitude.
2) Voice creates trust in a way that authority no longer can
There was a time when institutional powers were enough. You trusted the newspaper because it was a newspaper. You believed the news anchor because he was wearing a suit and sitting behind a desk.
That era is over.
I’ve talked about this before, but trust has shifted from institutions to individuals. We don’t trust logos anymore – we trust people. And this is not cynicism, but actually a return to something more human. For most of human history, we received information from people we knew, whose experiences we could appreciate, and whose biases we understood.
Independent bloggers – the good ones anyway – let you see exactly who they are. Their outlook, blind spots, experiences. You know where they come from. This transparency builds trust over time.
Key selling points, on the other hand, are often hidden behind a brand. Articles are published by the Staff Reporter or edited by committee so heavily that the original voice is completely lost. There is no person to trust or rely on – just a title.
3) Readers want depth, not illusion
One of the great frustrations of modern media consumption is a piece that seems important—a long title, multiple sections, an impressive publication—but ends up knowing nothing more than when you started.
You get what, but never why. Summary, but never the idea. It’s a quote from an expert, but never the actual meaning of what that expert said.
Freelance writers tend to go deeper. Not always – there’s a lot of shallow content everywhere – but the format encourages it. Without the pressure of publishing twelve stories a day, a blogger can spend a week or a month sitting on a single idea until they actually find something worth saying.
Readers looking for independent blogs are often looking for this depth. They quickly read the shots. They want someone to actually think something.
4) The algorithm made us crave the anti-algorithm
It is worth noting an irony here.
Social media and search engines should have given us perfectly personalized information. And in some ways they are. But they also created a particular kind of burnout—the feeling that everything you see is designed to grab your attention instead of serving your true interests.
You click on something because the title is irresistible, not because you really care. You feel more informed, but you actually feel less. It has a vague sense of being played with.
Indie blogs feel different, especially ones you find through word of mouth or intentionally seek out. There is no algorithm that decides what you see. You chose to be there. The writer chose to write this because they wanted to, not because a trending topic recommended it to them. This mutual intention changes the whole dynamic.
5) People crave a relationship with the writer, not the content
There is a concept of Buddhism that I always think of when I think about it: kalyana-mittaor “spiritual friendship”. The idea that growth in relationships happens best—not through downloading information from an authority figure, but through genuine connection with a colleague who is struggling with the same questions.
This is what the best freelance writing offers. Not an expert imparting wisdom, but a person who thinks out loud with you.
When I write about mindfulness or dealing with anxiety or building something from nothing, I’m not pretending to have it all figured out. I share what I learned, what worked and what didn’t. Readers can feel it. And they respond to it because it reflects how they learn from the people in their lives—through honest conversation, not polished presentations.
The mainstream media rarely creates this feeling. The format does not allow this. Freelance writing lives and dies on it.
6) Niche expertise trumps general coverage every time
Ask yourself: if you wanted to learn about sourdough, would you rather read a review of a general food publication or a blog by someone who has been baking sourdough for five years and has written about almost nothing?
The answer is obvious. And the same logic applies to almost every topic.
Freelance bloggers tend to delve into specific areas. They are not newsworthy all-encompassing generalists today. They have been immersed for years—sometimes decades—in a particular set of ideas, skills, or experiences, and their writing reflects that accumulated knowledge in ways that are truly difficult to replicate at scale.
This is one of the things that keeps me going with Hack Spirit after all these years. I am not trying to cover everything. I write about mindfulness, psychology, and how to live better—an intersection I’ve lived with since my mid-20s. This specificity is valuable not in spite of its narrowness, but because of it.
7) The scale of authenticity goes down, not up
Here’s the troubling truth for big media organizations: the things that make writing truly credible—vulnerability, specificity, a consistent and distinctive voice—are harder to maintain as you grow.
A single writer can be original. A team of fifty writers, all working under style guides and editorial mandates, almost by definition, makes that originality something more palatable and less real.
Independent blogs are structurally positioned to improve authenticity. There is no committee to check whether a personal anecdote is too personal. No editor softens the idea to avoid controversy. No brand manager questions whether it aligns with their values.
This is just a man, writing what he really thinks, to readers who actually want to hear it.
This is not a small thing. In a media landscape that is increasingly difficult to trust, this immediacy is worth more than most mastheads.
Last words
If you’ve found yourself gravitating to individual writers and independent sites rather than major publications, you’re not in trouble. You don’t get caught in an echo chamber. You are responding to something real.
A relationship with a writer you trust—one whose mindset you’ve followed for years, whose blind spots you understand, whose perspective you know even if you don’t agree with—is truly more rewarding than the firehose of institutional media that optimizes for clicks over engagement.
Trust has always been personal. We are finally building media that reflects this.
If you run a website, write a newsletter, or are thinking about starting one: don’t try to look like an institution. With a voice like yours. That’s the whole point.
