Jake Fischer has seen it all in NBA media.

The insider, formerly of Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report and Yahoo Sports and linked to openings across the evolving NBA media landscape throughout the fall, is going independent — again.

This week, Fischer will begin as a contributor at The Stein Line, the Substack run by Hall of Fame NBA reporter Marc Stein. Talks between the two began back in 2022, and after Fischer was let go by Yahoo this summer, he quickly honed in on the opportunity again.

Fischer will write at least twice per week in the newsletter that Stein has run since 2021. The duo hopes to add new subscribers at the same annual price point by combining their sourcing and balancing their points of view, all in one publication.

“Instead of competing against each other, you’re getting what we believe is two of the top five NBA newsbreakers combining forces to be able to get more and report more and be able to tell fans more, because we’re not just competing against each other,” Fischer told Awful Announcing. “He has a lot of old-guard connections, I have a lot of younger, new-guard connections, and of course we have our own relationships that kind of go across those aisles, but [we get] to combine our networks.”

In August, Fischer was hit with the surprise news that Yahoo was declining the final year of a three-year contract he signed in 2022. The move came from a new regime, just six months after previous management rewarded him with a “pretty fortunate bonus” and lauded his No Cap Room podcast with cohost Dan Devine as an “ideal” example of Yahoo Sports digital content.

Fortunately for Fischer, experience in sports media also means having the savvy to handle a layoff. He was among the victims of a mass round of layoffs at SI in 2019, which informatively for Fischer as a young reporter, even the legendary Chris Ballard didn’t survive.

After that career setback, Fischer wrote a book and expanded his chops. Rather than just writing longform, Fischer began breaking news.

A full-time gig certainly has its perks, but Fischer is embracing independence.

“The entrepreneurial aspect of being your own boss was really empowering back when I first started it,” Fischer said. “Because at SI, I went through layoff after layoff after layoff before I finally got let go. And that story is something that is just unfortunately ubiquitous across the media industry.”

When even hedge fund-owned Yahoo and Disney-owned ESPN are cutting basketball talent, independent may in fact be the safest thing to be — if you can swing it. Fischer hopes to lean even more into the “people’s insider” moniker he has embraced since leaving SI, taking readers into his travels and reporting process through the intimacy a newsletter provides.

“You look down the street and Zach Lowe’s getting laid off at ESPN, and he’s arguably the greatest analyst we’ve got in the game,” Fischer said. “So what does it matter how how well you’re doing, even if you’ve got people above you telling you that? There’s always going to be some new corporate leadership structure … it’s just a natural law of gravity in this business.”

Fischer will continue doing live news hits on the Bleacher Report app, which he began earlier in November. He is in talks with a podcast company about rekindling an audio product, wants to pick back up on documentaries after work on previous projects centered on NBA athletes Greg Oden and God Shammgod, and is even working on a novel.

With each round of layoffs and acquisitions, the number of full-time positions in sports media dwindles even as the thirst for sports content grows. Fischer hopes to tap into that firehose from the outside, with a point of view he believes can cut through.

At The Stein Line, Fischer hopes to bring an even thicker layer of authenticity to his reporting. He believes there is a niche for intel-based retrospectives and what-ifs when it comes to the ever-popular NBA transaction beat, inspired by one particular hit athlete-hosted podcast.

“The kind of stuff that you’re seeing Jeff Teague talk about on his podcast and people like, can we do that in a more intel version?” Fischer wonders. “That’s all stuff I’m going to be trying to do.”

When Adrian Wojnarowski dropped his final Woj Bomb earlier this year announcing his retirement from media, Fischer was lifted as a “dark horse” replacement at ESPN. The timing of his own layoff at Yahoo was simply a coincidence, and while Fischer said he spoke with “at least five” media companies this fall, he ultimately couldn’t pass up the chance to learn from Stein and go it alone.

Fischer will “mourn” the travel budget and per diem that comes with a corporate gig like Yahoo, but talks with other media companies pulled up the more meddlesome aspects of that line of work.

“Even having conversations with managers at other places and hearing the buzzwords and the KPI stuff and like, how do you fit in what our model is going to be, it was so apparent that the model for Stein was just to be myself and write alongside a good friend of mine,” Fischer explained. “So I kind of stopped a lot of conversations.”

Known by NBA fans for radical transparency on social media and on the mic, Fischer isn’t above letting readers know he lights up to decompress from a busy day of reporting. The audience will hear about his goofy travel stories or training a new dog.

And when Fischer jumped the gun on a few NBA Draft picks earlier this year, he was just as profane as any average reader would be after a gaffe at work.

In an online world of influencers and constant content, Fischer hopes to meld that relationship with NBA fans with traditional reporting and storytelling in his new role.

“This ‘People’s Insider’ that I’ve developed over the years, I’ve always thought that nicknames are ridiculous if you make them yourself, but it’s just something I was seeing in Reddit threads and my Twitter mentions when I posted about smoking weed after reporting on the draft and stuff,” Fischer said. “There’s a way to claim that … and I’m trying to have fun with it and lean into the fact that I am an insider and do have access to NBA information, but do it in a more personable, fun way than I think I already was doing it.”

Fischer’s first post on The Stein Line goes live on Thursday.