journalism
(60)
Five Months to Make a Go of It
Barbara Spector Yeninas turned a waterfront reporting beat into a business that reached its fiftieth anniversary. Along the way, she changed the guest list, mentored women and made room for a successor.
Bilen Mesfin Packwood and the business of being heard
She built Change Consulting to help racial justice leaders tell their stories. Now Bilen Mesfin Packwood is asking what happens when the machinery of attention gets in the way of listening.
Darcy Palder and the trouble with first impressions
Before her work at Meta, Darcy Palder reported on politics, helped defend a bus route and studied in a city in revolt. Her own writing keeps returning to a deceptively difficult question: who gets to speak for whom?
Robert Thomson and the price of a story
He began by typing commodity prices in a Melbourne newsroom. Now News Corp’s chief executive is asking the companies building artificial intelligence to put a price on the words they need.
Dana Lenetz and the life behind the byline
Before CEO communications at Organon, Dana Lenetz was a teenage newspaper contributor, a fashion publicist and a reader with opinions. Her published work follows a career spent on both sides of the story.
Camilo Giraldo-Gallo and the question before dinner
A Colombian journalist turned communications founder asks people about food, then follows the answer into their lives. From political research to Comersaciones, his work keeps returning to the art of listening.
Ron Sachs and the Art of Leaving the Chair
He opened his firm with three clients and enough savings for four months of failure. Thirty years later, Ron Sachs’s most revealing work may be the opportunities he has made for other people.
USA TODAY Network makes the neighborhood national
A local reporter knows the street. A national network supplies the megaphone. USA TODAY Network turns that arrangement into journalism, advertising, and a business with some very public growing pains.
The Small Firm That Learned to Make the Press Its Own Client
Veritas Group rarely behaves like an agency standing outside the room. It gets inside the machinery - producing the event, shaping the coalition, building the outlet, and making communications part of the work itself.
ynet learned where to put the paywall
Israel’s round-the-clock news publisher tried charging readers abroad, opened the gates again, then built a premium tier. Its story is a lesson in what readers will pay for - and what keeps them coming back.
Margaret Sullivan Still Believes the Press Can Earn Its Keep
From a summer internship in Buffalo to the awkward chair of public editor at The New York Times, Sullivan has spent her career asking one durable question: does this journalism serve the public?
Ad Age Keeps Score on the People Who Sell You Everything
For nearly a century a Chicago-born trade paper has counted the ad industry's biggest spenders and sharpest talent. Its data desk is the reason Madison Avenue reads it before breakfast.
The E.W. Scripps Company
A newspaper company born in 1878 now makes its wager on the most modern old technology in America: free television. With local news, ION and a growing sports slate, Scripps is trying to make reach itself the product.
Ghost
Ghost is an open-source publishing platform that lets writers, journalists and creators run a website, send email newsletters and sell paid memberships from one place. Built on Node.js and released under the MIT license, it is stewarded by the nonprofit Ghost Foundation and funded entirely by its users through Ghost(Pro) managed hosting - taking 0% of creators' subscription revenue.
Emily Brittain
Emily Brittain is a Senior Communications Manager at Microsoft, working within the Office of the Americas Markets & Industries President. Based in Nashville, Tennessee, she crafts the stories that shape how Microsoft's largest regional business - spanning Canada, the United States, and Latin America - communicates its vision internally and externally. A Northwestern University-trained journalist with over 11 years at Microsoft, she brought a multimedia storyteller's instincts to one of the world's most consequential technology companies, producing town halls, executive narratives, and brand messaging at scale.
The Business of Fashion
The Business of Fashion (BoF) is a London-based global media and intelligence company covering the fashion, beauty and luxury industries. Founded by Imran Amed in 2007 as a blog written from his flat in Notting Hill, BoF has grown into an authoritative platform that combines agenda-setting journalism, paid professional memberships, data and advisory work through BoF Insights, online masterclasses, the BoF Careers job marketplace, and marquee events like BoF VOICES and the BoF 500. The Financial Times led its Series B round in 2019, and the company reaches readers and members in more than 200 countries.
Sarah Personette
Sarah Personette is the CEO of Puck, the journalist-owned media company often described as 'Vanity Fair for the Substack era.' She took the top job in January 2024 after a career spent on the revenue side of media's biggest platforms - head of ad sales and Chief Customer Officer at Twitter through its 2022 sale, VP of global business marketing at Facebook, COO of Refinery29, and U.S. president of Universal McCann. At Puck she is betting that journalists are the original influencers, fusing the financial incentives of the creator economy with old-school reporting rigor, and pushing the company toward profitability while expanding into fashion, sports, and live events.
Ben Casselman
Ben Casselman is the Chief Economics Correspondent for The New York Times, where he turns labor reports, Fed decisions and inflation prints into stories people actually read. A self-described 'unapologetic econ nerd,' he built his name on evidence-first, data-driven reporting at The Wall Street Journal and FiveThirtyEight before joining the Times in 2017. He shared a Gerald Loeb Award and a Pulitzer finalist nod for Deepwater Horizon coverage, is a frequent voice on the NYT podcast The Daily, and teaches economics reporting at the CUNY Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.
Puck
Puck is a New York-based digital media company founded in 2021 that covers the four centers of American power - Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Washington, and Wall Street. It treats journalists like founders, giving its writers equity and a cut of the subscription revenue their newsletters generate, and reaches readers through email newsletters, podcasts, and live events.
Derek Thompson
Derek Thompson is an American journalist, author, and podcaster best known for co-writing the #1 New York Times bestseller Abundance with Ezra Klein and hosting the Plain English podcast on The Ringer. After 17 years as a staff writer at The Atlantic, he left in 2025 to write independently on Substack, focusing on housing, energy, technology, and the decline of in-person social life.
Afar
Afar is a purpose-driven travel media company built around the idea that the best trips change the people who take them. Launched in 2009 from a chance trip to India, it now publishes a quarterly print magazine, a daily-updated website, podcasts, video, newsletters and travel experiences for a community of curious, conscientious travelers.
Chris Best
Chris Best is the co-founder and CEO of Substack, the subscription newsletter platform that has paid out hundreds of millions of dollars to independent writers. A systems engineer turned serial entrepreneur, Best previously co-founded Kik Messenger, scaling it to 300 million users before pivoting to rewrite the economics of media. Substack - which he launched in 2017 with Hamish McKenzie and Jairaj Sethi - has grown to over 5 million paid subscriptions, raised $213M in total funding including a $100M Series C in 2025, and minted more than 50 creators earning over $1 million annually on the platform.
Hamish McKenzie
Hamish McKenzie is the New Zealand-born co-founder and Chief Writing Officer of Substack, the subscription newsletter platform that has fundamentally reshaped how writers monetize their work. A former journalist and Tesla lead writer who wrote a book about Elon Musk's EV revolution, McKenzie pivoted from covering disruption to causing it - co-founding Substack in 2017 with Chris Best and Jairaj Sethi. Today the platform hosts over 50,000 earning creators and has raised $213 million total funding including a $100M Series C. McKenzie hosts The Active Voice podcast, delivered a TED2025 talk on the future of media, and is writing a book called 'How to Save the Media' due in 2026.
Kevin Lee
Kevin Lee is an executive at Substack, the subscription newsletter and media platform based in San Francisco that reached unicorn status with a $1.1 billion valuation in 2025 after raising a $100 million Series C. Substack has grown to host over 50,000 paid publications, with creators collectively earning more than $600 million annually and 20+ million monthly active subscribers on the platform.
Nina Perez
Nina Perez is the founder of Project Fandom, an entertainment news and podcast platform she launched in 2009 that covers TV, movies, gaming, comics, anime, and books from a geek's perspective. Dubbed 'The Oprah of MySpace' for her uncanny ability to get readers hooked on almost anything, she is also a published author with three series under her belt, a Social Media Community Manager by day, and a lifelong Brooklynite who now calls Portland, Oregon home.
Substack
Substack is a subscription publishing platform that lets writers, podcasters, and video creators run paid newsletters and own the direct relationship with their readers. Founded in 2017, the company hosts thousands of paid publications, processes hundreds of millions in subscription revenue annually, and has become the default home for independent media on the internet.
Adam Ragusea
Adam Ragusea is an American YouTuber, food writer, and former public-radio reporter who turned a kitchen-counter pizza video into a 2.6-million-subscriber cooking empire. A former journalism professor at Mercer University, he treats recipes the way a beat reporter treats a city hall meeting: with curiosity, skepticism, and a willingness to season the cutting board instead of the steak.
Coffeezilla
Stephen Findeisen, known online as Coffeezilla, is an American investigative YouTuber and crypto journalist who built a 4.5M+ subscriber audience by exposing pump-and-dump tokens, fake gurus, celebrity grift, and high-profile fraud cases including FTX, CryptoZoo, and Save the Kids.
Johnny Harris
Johnny Harris is an Emmy-winning American journalist, filmmaker, and YouTuber with over 7.5 million subscribers, known for visually-driven explainer videos on geopolitics, history, and international affairs. A former Vox senior producer and creator of the acclaimed 'Borders' documentary series, Harris left legacy media in 2020 to build an independent journalism operation that now employs 30+ people. In February 2026, he and his wife Iz co-launched Newpress, an algorithm-free creator journalism platform designed to give audiences a direct role in the journalism process.
Tucker Carlson
Tucker Carlson is an American journalist, commentator, and founder of the Tucker Carlson Network, an independent streaming and podcast operation he launched in late 2023 after his exit from Fox News. He hosts long-form interviews on X, YouTube, and TCN, where his guests have ranged from Vladimir Putin to obscure scientists, mechanics, and dissidents - a deliberate pivot away from the cable-news format he helped define.