Joe Aston's new venture Rampart has an eye on US creators, media upstarts
The former Rear Window columnist will return to regular publishing for the first time in more than a year next month with his new publication Rampart.
Joe Aston, best known for his 12-year tenure leading the Australian Financial Review’s Rear Window column, is betting that the wave of independent publishing that has swept through the US media landscape is destined for Australia.
Aston’s new publication, Rampart, is set to launch its first dispatch in early February. The subscription-based newsletter seeks to tap into the demand for creator-led publishing, a trend that boomed in the United States during the pandemic and saw prominent journalists leave legacy outlets for platforms like Substack, where they could publish independently.
In 2025, however, many of the writers who benefited from that early boom — such as Bari Weiss, who founded The Free Press, and Charlie Warzel, whose Galaxy Brain newsletter was absorbed by The Atlantic — have shifted away from building businesses entirely around their personal brands.
Aston is making a bet the first phase of this trend has yet to fully take hold in Australia — and that his target audience will stump up the $65 per month it will cost to read him.
