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Francesca Donner has had a somewhat unusual journalism career in that she never aspired to be a reporter or have her own bylines; instead, she started out her career as an editor and rose through the ranks of places like the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. But though she wielded some influence at these publishers, she was always frustrated by the lack of female viewpoints, both in terms of who was writing the articles and who was being interviewed for them. So in 2022, she launched the Persistent, a sort of online magazine that's written entirely by women.

In a recent interview, Francesca talked about her experience working in mainstream media, how she's trying to build an interactive community with the Persistent, and why she's been hesitant to lock content behind a paywall.

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One day in the 1990s, Alan Jay received a surprising phone call at work from Jeff Bezos's assistant, who said the Amazon founder wanted to meet with him during an upcoming trip to the UK. That meeting would eventually lead to Amazon acquiring IMDB, the movie database Alan had co-founded.

After the acquisition, Alan didn't rest on his laurels; over the next two decades, he went on to co-found two other media companies – one in entertainment and the other sports – both of which had their own successful exits. In a recent interview, Alan told the origin story of IMDB, walked through how he built the two other media properties, and explained why it's much harder to launch a media business today compared to 20 years ago.

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If Stuart Schuffman were in his early 20s today and building an independent media career, he'd probably be a TikTok influencer, but when he launched Broke Ass Stuart in the early 2000s, the natural medium was a print zine, one he printed out and stapled together himself. It was a San Francisco travel guide of sorts, and he trucked it all around the city and convinced coffee shops and bookstores to sell it on consignment.

The zine was never a huge moneymaker, but it landed him a book deal, and from there it expanded into an online media brand that's widely read by the city locals. In fact, Stuart can't walk through the streets of San Francisco today without being recognized.

In a recent interview, he told the Broke Ass Stuart origin story and explained how, bit by bit, it turned into a real business.