The Next Media Moguls: 141 of the most successful media entrepreneurs reveal their secrets

I interviewed 148 of the world's most successful media entrepreneurs, and they walked me through, step by step, how they built their businesses. This book contains over 314,000 words and 926 pages worth of insights that you can use in building your own media business.

This book is available as a PDF and epub.

Chapters include:

1. How a recipe blogger is preparing for a post-Google future
2. The newsroom that built its business entirely around social media
3. This former touring musician is building the next children's entertainment empire.
4. How the NBA's esports league reinvented itself as a creator-led media company
5. How a freelance writer turned a job board into a thriving subscription business
6. How a few local meetups spawned a B2B media company that spans across podcasts, events, and a 40,000-member Slack community
7. This company is building the world's largest platform for B2B creators
8. How a niche magazine turned print into a competitive advantage
9. How an Instagram meme page became a social-first entertainment empire with 95 million followers
10. How a Yankees podcast grew into a 60-person media company 
11. Did the Washington Post finally figure out how micropayments can actually work?
12. How a former science YouTuber built an AI platform used by the world’s largest creators
13. How a newsletter for underserved sports fans reached 1 million subscribers
14. How a bootstrapped blog became gaming culture’s most influential media company
15. How a scrappy finance blog scaled into a media powerhouse with multiple revenue streams
16. How a consultant built a massive following with unscripted TikTok and YouTube videos
17. From war correspondent to media founder: how a journalist built a news business from the Ukraine front lines
18. This startup is helping local news outlets outmaneuver legacy newspaper chains
19. How a revived print magazine attracted 33,000 paying subscribers
20. How HubSpot transformed itself from a content marketer into a full-fledged media company
21. How a hockey coaching conference grew into a $1.5 million media subscription business
22. How a niche newsletter turned its reporting into a data product
23. How a weekly PDF became one of Africa’s most innovative news products
24. This former TV writer now produces prestige audio dramas for Audible, iHeart, and Spotify
25. This independent magazine publisher doubled down on print
26. This media startup is trying to reach readers exhausted by political noise
27. The 30-year-old PDF newsletter with a 98% market penetration rate
28. This product review blog pivoted to video to protect itself from AI
29. How a niche YouTube channel became a multi-platform travel business
30. How a yoga teacher turned bedtime stories into a media empire
31. How Axios Local is leveraging AI to expand into smaller cities
32. How a professional voice actor built a hit indie game studio
33. From MrBeast to microdramas: Scott Brown’s bet on phone-native storytelling
34. How Starter Story grew from a side project into a multi-million dollar media business (and why HubSpot bought it)
35. The playbook behind one of the fastest-growing social-first newsroomsv
36. The accidental ad tech founder: Eric Hochberger’s 20-Year bet on the open web
37. How a former hedge fund analyst built a six-figure newsletter covering Asia’s overlooked stocks
38. He Shut Down Time’s Moscow Bureau. Then He Built His Own Magazine
39. How a small journalism nonprofit is holding the largest pharma companies to account
40. A couple teenagers launched a media company that now drives 240 billion annual views
41. This company wants to fix the broken economics of standup comedy
42. How a few college students bootstrapped one of the largest sports media websites in the world
43. This social-first news outlet turned street interviews into a 600,000-subscriber YouTube channel
44. Why a magazine geared toward political operatives wants to expand into a B2B media empire
45. How the Kyiv Independent used global sympathy to generate membership revenue
46. How a local newsletter company is leveraging AI to cover hundreds of counties across the US
47. Why BroBible's staff bought the website back from the media company that had acquired it
48. Why the founder of a popular cycling blog sold it and then left to launch a competitor
49. How a failed horror movie director co-founded one of the most popular yoga channels on YouTube
50. Inside Big Cabal Media’s Ambitious Plan to Build Africa’s Next Great Media Company
51. How a former USA Today columnist launched his own travel channel on YouTube
52. Why this business news outlet ditched advertising to focus entirely on paid subscriptions
53. Why a former New York Times editor launched her own women-focused magazine
54. Why Business Insider's former editor went all in on evergreen video
55. How an IMDB co-founder achieved three successful media exits
56. How a San Francisco print zine evolved into a thriving local blog
57. How a government contractor built a media empire around his niche content
58. This local newsletter covering a Dallas suburb has the highest paid conversion rate on Substack
59. This former Amazon executive generates over $200,000 a year from a newsletter he sends just once a week
60. Why a marketing consultant bought the largest real estate trade magazine in Canada
61. How a professional sailing league built massive reach on YouTube and social media
62. This Stanford lecturer co-hosts one of the most popular design podcasts
63. How a PR consultant launched a thriving tech news outlet
64. How two Hollywood writers launched one of the most popular parenting podcasts
65. How a former 60 Minutes producer raised six figures in donations to launch an LGBTQ-focused media outlet
66. How Medium finally pivoted its way to profitability
67. How two college friends reunited to build a thriving politics podcast
68. How Jonathan Skogmo disrupted the viral video clip economy — and plans to do the same in travel media
69. This YouTuber amassed a half million social media followers by interviewing touring musicians
70. How three Morning Brew alums are building their own network of niche media outlets
71. This former Disney exec's podcast company generates 100 million monthly downloads
72. The nonprofit news playbook that starts with major donors, not memberships
73. The unlikely local media giant you’ve probably never heard of
74. How a mortgage newsletter became a modern B2B media company
75. The subscription strategy behind one of Britain’s fastest-growing local news startups
76. How a Colorado Springs food critic built a sustainable one-man media business
77. How 1440 built a 4-million-subscriber newsletter empire by obsessing over unit economics
78. How a former institutional investor built a six-figure media business — and then pivoted into fintech
79. How Eric Newcomer scaled his startups newsletter into a $2 million business
80. Is there life after CNN? Chris Cillizza hopes so
81. How Eric Siu leveraged his hugely popular podcasts to grow his ad agency
82. How Keith Pepper turned an Atlanta newspaper chain into a digital-first media company
83. How Block Club Chicago reached 20,000 paying subscribers
84. How State House News charges $4,000 for access to its journalism
85. How Stacker distributes sponsored content to thousands of publishers
86. How Mignon Fogarty launched a massively successful series of online courses
87. How Andrew Curtin built Construction Wave, a B2B outlet covering the UK's construction industry
88. How Dan Oshinsky used his popular newsletter to grow his consulting business
89. How Tim Burrowes helped build Mumbrella into a $7 million media brand
90. How Project Brazen builds huge audiences for its narrative podcasts
91. How Alex Halperin built WeedWeek, a B2B outlet that covers California's cannabis industry
92. How Mission Local spun off from UC Berkeley and became a self-sustaining news outlet
93. How Colossus built one of the largest investing-focused podcast networks
94. How The Future Party collaborates with the world's largest brands to host events
95. How Gary Arndt built Everything Everywhere, a podcast with 1.5 million monthly downloads
96. How Local News Now built its loyal audience
97. How Jared Newman built Cord Cutter Weekly, a TV streaming newsletter with 32,000 subscribers
98. How TAPinto sells local ads across 90 news sites
99. How Philip Taylor built FinCon, the leading conference for personal finance creators
100. How the Daily Upside grew to over 1 million subscribers
101. The economics of ghostwriting books
102. How Salesforce Ben built a 20-person media company around enterprise software
103. How Joe Pulizzi built a media business servicing the Creator Economy
104. How Brad Hargreaves turned a real estate newsletter into a six-figure media and data business
105. How Austria’s biggest explainer podcast built a sustainable independent media business
106. How a cloud computing consultant built a community-first media business focused on Microsoft software
107. How a CFO turned accounting jargon into a 75,000-subscriber media business
108. Inside the rise of Australia’s biggest social-first news brand
109. How a teenage gamer built a 60-million-reader media empire
110. How Cityside turned a local news blog into a scalable nonprofit journalism network
111. How a former travel journalist built a paid membership community for the PR industry
112. How Living Cozy built a successful ecommerce business by reviewing furniture and household appliances
113. How Freetrail carved out a media niche for one of the country's fastest-growing sports
114. How the Sunday Long Read newsletter built a thriving membership by curating longform journalism
115. How the GameDiscoverCo newsletter launched a data product for game developers
116. How the Tangle newsletter reached 77,000 readers and $624,000 in annual revenue
117. This local news outlet carved out a lucrative niche by serving Indianapolis women
118. How Oovvuu grew its video platform to over 400 million streams per day
119. How a blog about the VC industry generated over $1 million from online courses
120. How a B2B outlet that covers the corporate travel industry built up a loyal subscriber base
121. How Man of Many grew into the largest men's lifestyle media outlet in Australia
122. How a failed consulting strategy led to a successful B2B media business
123. How a freelance tech journalist turned a niche Android newsletter into a thriving media business
124. How a former MSN.com editor built a sustainable local news startup from his living room
125. How Hubspot built a massive newsletter and podcast audience
126. How a kids-focused podcaster reached 1 million monthly downloads
127. How investment newsletter The Daily Upside reached 300,000 subscribers
128. How a former Cosmo editor built Australia's largest women-focused media company
129. How a college student launched one of the most influential B2B sports media companies
130. How Starter Story grew to 1.4 million monthly visitors and $500,000 in annual revenue
131. How Big Cabal Media became one of the fastest-growing news outlets in Africa
132. How an interest in whiskey birthed a thriving media company
133. How Maria Brito used Instagram to build a 7-figure art consulting business
134. How two graduate students launched the leading biotech publisher in Europe
135. How an engineering student accidentally started a thriving science news site
136. How ScoopWhoop became one of India’s most viral publishers
137. Judd Legum proved that investigative journalism can thrive on Substack
138. Can a hit YouTube channel thrive after its founder departs?
139. How The Art of Manliness built its loyal audience
140. How Richard Rushfield founded one of Hollywood’s most influential newsletters
141. How The Discourse scaled its business model to 34 local news sites
142. Daily Detroit is proving there’s a market for local podcasts
143. How a VC investor grew her newsletter to over 100,000 subscribers
144. How Josh Spector monetizes his 25,000 newsletter subscribers
145. I nside the career of a successful ghostwriter
146. This YouTuber built a massive following with pop music guitar lessons
147. How Taegan Goddard built a thriving paid membership for Political Wire
148. Was Randy Cassingham the first member of the Creator Economy?