Here comes Substack journalism: a short biography of Alys Key

The freelance journalist discusses her love for writing and the state of journalism today

I’m prepared to lose you in the first line, dear reader, but I loved The Devil Wears Prada 2 (2026). The film, in all its glory, retained many of the concepts that made the first one a classic. But compared to the first, the newsroom is surrounded by less pomp and pageantry. Miranda Priestly, still a discourteous boss, is now more subdued. And Andy Sachs, still one of the Emilys chasing Miranda’s approval, has been brought back to the magazine, Runway, to help save its reputation, and in return, raise its profit margin.

Twenty years apart, both films adequately represent the times in which they were released. If the first film was a juicy Anna Wintour-inspired comedy-drama depicting journalism at its peak, then the second is a cry for help; an allegory of journalism’s gradual implosion. It’s fitting that when the 2006 film came out, Alys Key, former Deputy Business Editor at The i Paper, was growing up in a ‘Saturday Guardian-reading household’ with ambitions of becoming a fashion journalist. “I was really, really into fashion magazines and I loved The Devil Wears Prada,” she said during our conversation in early May. She is now freelance, publishing on Substack, and was the features editor at Digital Frontier when it ceased publication last year after only 24 months.

“Maybe there’s a future for the brand [Digital Frontier] somewhere. You know, that’s in the hands of the founder. But at the same time, that same year, we had Business Insider basically cutting a lot of staff in Europe. We had TechCrunch cutting a lot of staff in Europe. And then just at the very start of this year, Wired basically cut their whole UK team. That, taken altogether, I think, is quite a bad sign about tech journalism in the UK and Europe”, she explained. “Although the UK has a great emerging tech scene and is a world player in many sectors, the attention is just all on San Francisco. And then to a slightly lesser degree on the Trump administration and the politics of technology. Everything’s become so US-focused. You’ll note that many of the same organisations that cut jobs here are hiring more people to cover tech in the US.”

She speaks about the need for a new type of publication based in London, but doesn’t just float the idea as if it’s only occurred to her. She details a very niche publication part of the tech scene, not one that covers all things. Staff? Only a couple of people; “a much more nimble operation”. But it would be something local as well, to include stories like cafe openings in, say, King’s Cross—“that level of granularity”. Since she has this very specific vision and insists it should be done, I wondered why then hasn’t she started it? “I’ve never thought of myself as an entrepreneurial person,” she said. “I don’t think I would want to make UK 2.0 [her primary Substack newsletter] my only thing right now. I have other jobs, I have other commissions for places…” She paused and reconsidered the question.

“It’s a good question, though, like why haven’t I? I have thought about, should there be like a King’s Cross daily newspaper that is about the tech scene, and that is just about that? I feel like I have started something new, but I’m probably not going to do something that costs money,” she laughs. “I guess...I don’t know. I don’t know how to answer the question.” Although, as she explains, it “could be more and more thriving”, some journalists are already doing a version of this: George Eaton of Arguably, Tom Bristow of The Morning Intelligence, and Mike Butcher of Pathfounders—all former senior journalists at established publications: The New Statesman, Politico, and TechCrunch, respectively.

Alys seriously reflects on a question before answering it. Maybe that is why she responds with long monologues. Her responses are detailed and fully considered, not just a combination of sentences; she speaks as well as she writes. She read a line from newsletter writer Kate Lindsay, which perfectly expressed her sentiments on the industry: “The thing I wanted to do with my life has been dying ever since I was born. No one told me this, of course.” Her voice took on a different cadence, like a prerecorded audiobook. I asked if she would start a podcast or some form of audio production. “My worry with podcasts now is that I like audio. I don’t want to see podcasters. I don’t need extra screen time in my day. So I still love the audio. But it seems like now everyone who launches a podcast has to do it on video, even if it’s just them on Zoom or something. It does seem like it’s almost non-negotiable…But I don’t have the audio-visual skills. I don’t have editing and video skills. And so you introduce this cost that suddenly makes it like, is it worth doing?

What is worth doing? Is going back to a ‘structured’ or ‘established’ or ‘mainstream’ publication worth doing? “I would if it was the right thing,” Alys, who has worked for mainstream CityAM and The i Paper, replied. Alys worries that “mainstream media” isn’t getting it right. She raised her hands to air-quote because we had debated what the right terminology was, and settled on ‘established media’. “I think at the moment I just don’t see the right opportunity, and I think that is something I have in common with a lot of my peers. And that is why we have just, like, created our own jobs from bits and pieces of freelancing, newsletters, podcasts, social media, and then consulting work, you know, sort of commercial work”.

Alys has two Substack newsletters, UK 2.0 and Sorry, We’re Prosed. UK 2.0 is a newsletter carried over from her time at Digital Frontier. In the founding article, The Great British Ideas Factory, she described it as “a loose collection of campaigns, people, think tanks and publications focused on making Britain a more ambitious, technologically innovative, successful place”. It is a manifesto for a United Kingdom and London that works. She explained further:

fI really hate it when people are like, ‘Oh, bro, just move to San Francisco then,’ because I find that to be very dismissive of human relationships and roots. This isn’t even just British people. This is anyone who has come to London. I think like we actually have a bit of a responsibility to make London this global launch pad where you can stay and scale like a big business because a lot of our top founders are not from the UK; they are from Poland or France or, you know, wherever else; somewhere a bit closer to London than it is to San Francisco. If we’re going to be the main European hub, it should be that you’re able to stay here and your family’s still an hour or two-flight away. It should be possible for this to be that you can succeed as much as you want to here and that there isn’t like a limit to the way you feel like you have to go elsewhere”.

The UK has often been derided for having an ambition problem—a certain scepticism or risk aversion unfamiliar to its American counterparts. Alys wants the UK to embrace ambition, and her message goes beyond growth, AI, or whatever else Toni Blair blogs about next; her message involves ‘people’. As far as ambition manifestos go, this sounds like a winning platform.