He trained as a lawyer, helped build The Verge, and now asks technology’s decision-makers a deceptively plain question: how do you decide? His career has become a test of whether the people shaping the internet can explain themselves.
Jacob Cohen Donnelly is the founder of A Media Operator, a subscription publication, podcast, and conference for the people who run digital media companies. He started it in August 2019 as a weekend Substack while holding down full-time roles at CoinDesk and then Morning Brew, where he became Publisher. In 2024 he went all-in, rebuilt AMO into a five-person media business doing roughly $1 million in revenue, and turned the annual AMO Summit into the room media executives consider essential to be inside.

Brian Morrissey is the founder and editor of The Rebooting, a 92,000+ subscriber newsletter and podcast business dissecting the economics of modern media. After a decade shaping Digiday into the defining trade publication of digital media, he walked away in 2020 to build something leaner and smarter - a one-person editorial operation that doubles as a lab for sustainable media models. He also co-hosts People vs Algorithms with Troy Young and Alex Schleifer.

Simon Owens is a Washington, DC-based media industry journalist, newsletter writer, and podcast host who runs Simon Owens's Media Newsletter on Substack. Known for deep-dive reporting on how publishers create, distribute, and monetize digital content, he has interviewed over 1,000 media entrepreneurs and built one of the most-followed independent media newsletters, with 38,000+ Substack followers and 61,000+ LinkedIn followers. His work covers the creator economy, subscription models, local news, and the evolving business of digital publishing.