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The Long Story with Simon Owens
The Long Story with Simon Owens
Simon Owens

The Long Story features the best longform journalism on the internet.

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Episodes

How Zyn conquered America

My newsletter: https://thelongstory.substack.com/   They walk among us, almost completely undetected. If you notice them at all, it’s because they’re... more

01 Apr 2025 · 26 minutes
What Hollywood can learn from MrBeast

My newsletter: https://thelongstory.substack.com/   Heading into 2025, we knew that MrBeast had a huge online following. After all, his main... more

13 Mar 2025 · 26 minutes
How JJ Hornblass built Royal Media, the most successful B2B media company you've never heard of

My newsletter: https://thelongstory.substack.com/   When JJ Hornblass got his first journalism job in the 1990s, his dad made a deal... more

26 Feb 2025 · 1 hour, 8 minutes
How The Dispatch is diversifying beyond just subscription revenue

My newsletter: https://thelongstory.substack.com/   The Dispatch was launched in 2020 with a pretty straightforward thesis: that people would pay for... more

19 Feb 2025 · 57 minutes
Mill Media proved that audiences would pay for local news

My newsleter: https://thelongstory.substack.com/ When the Manchester Mill launched in 2020, it operated on a simple theory: that local audiences would... more

12 Feb 2025 · 41 minutes
This Colorado food writer came up with a novel way to monetize his content

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   When Matthew Schniper launched his Colorado Springs food newsletter in 2023, he ran into a problem... more

30 Jan 2025 · 1 hour,
How 1440 scaled its newsletter to 4 million subscribers

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/ What’s the true monetary value of a newsletter subscriber? Tim Huelskamp knows the answer to that question.... more

23 Jan 2025 · 55 minutes
How Scott Porch helps podcasters grow and monetize their audiences

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   2024 was a big year for the podcast industry. Not only were there several huge deals... more

13 Jan 2025 · 59 minutes
How the Money for the Rest of Us podcast built a six figure membership platform

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   David Stein had an innovative marketing hack for growing his investing podcast called Money for the... more

19 Dec 2024 · 44 minutes
How Ben Cohen successfully pivoted from advertising to a subscription-based business model

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   In 2017, Ben Cohen was living the dream. His politics news site The Daily Banter was... more

12 Dec 2024 · 1 hour, 4 minutes
How Eric Newcomer used his newsletter to launch a $1.5 million events business

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   Like a lot of journalists=turned-media–entrepreneurs, Eric Newcomer decided to launch a paid newsletter after leaving his... more

09 Dec 2024 · 43 minutes
How the KC Sports Network is building a regional media empire

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   The last few years have been pretty good to the Kansas City Chiefs, what with its... more

14 Nov 2024 · 29 minutes
How Lon Seidman used his tech YouTube channel to build a huge affiliate business

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   Lon Seidman doesn’t operate the largest gadget YouTube channel in the world, but he doesn’t need... more

08 Nov 2024 · 26 minutes
How to market a book in the age of Tiktok

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   Book publicity is a mixed bag these days. On the one hand, it’s never been easier... more

24 Oct 2024 · 26 minutes
How Alts.co monetizes its massive newsletter with an investor membership platform

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   When people sign up for the Alts.co newsletter, they’re looking to read its deep dives into... more

18 Oct 2024 · 21 minutes
How Eric Siu leveraged his hugely popular podcasts to grow his ad agency

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   Eric Siu has a pretty massive audience; his YouTube channel boasts 161,000 subscribers and his two... more

17 Oct 2024 · 18 minutes
How Keith Pepper turned an Atlanta newspaper chain into a digital-first media company

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   When Keith Pepper bought a chain of print newspapers back in 2020, he received an email... more

10 Oct 2024 · 18 minutes
How Block Club Chicago reached 20,000 paying subscribers

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   Layoffs in the local news sector are, sadly, a regular occurrence, but the founders of Block... more

24 Sep 2024 · 52 minutes
How State House News charges $4,000 for access to its journalism

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   For much of its 130-year existence, State House News operated as a standard newswire service. Its... more

18 Sep 2024 · 41 minutes
How Stacker distributes sponsored content to thousands of publishers

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   Most people are familiar with newswires like the Associated Press and Reuters, but a much newer... more

11 Sep 2024 · 15 minutes
How Mignon Fogarty launched a massively successful series of online courses

My Substack: https://simonowens.substack.com/   Mignon Fogarty isn’t just one of the world’s most popular podcasters, she’s also an incredibly innovative... more

05 Sep 2024 · 15 minutes
How Andrew Curtin built Construction Wave, a B2B outlet covering the UK's construction industry

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   Most companies buy advertising to drive sales of their products, but Andrew Curtin’s first sponsor mostly... more

04 Sep 2024 · 37 minutes
How Tim Burrowes helped build Mumbrella into a $7 million media brand

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   Like a lot of journalists in the mid-2000s, Tim Burrowes grew frustrated with his employer’s print... more

21 Aug 2024 · 56 minutes
How Alex Halperin built WeedWeek, a B2B outlet that covers California's cannabis industry

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   When Alex Halperin launched WeedWeek in 2015, he was entering an industry that had nothing but... more

08 Aug 2024 · 36 minutes
How Mission Local spun off from UC Berkeley and became a self-sustaining news outlet

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   One of the great things about being a college journalism major today is that it’s incredibly... more

05 Aug 2024 · 32 minutes
How Colossus built one of the largest investing-focused podcast networks

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   When Patrick O’Shaughnessy launched his podcast Invest Like the Best in 2016, he had no intention... more

31 Jul 2024 · 40 minutes
How Gary Arndt built Everything Everywhere, a podcast with 1.5 million monthly downloads

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   What does a professional travel photographer do when all international flights are shut down due to... more

17 Jul 2024 · 52 minutes
How Jared Newman built Cord Cutter Weekly, a TV streaming newsletter with 32,000 subscribers

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   When Jared Newman launched his Cord Cutter Weekly newsletter back in 2016, the streaming TV market... more

27 Jun 2024 · 33 minutes
How Philip Taylor built FinCon, the leading conference for personal finance creators

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   Today, the personal finance content niche is absolutely ginormous. You can’t open up YouTube, TikTok, or... more

23 May 2024 · 50 minutes
The economics of ghostwriting books

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   I’m sure just about everybody has had the experience of looking at a celebrity memoir and... more

09 May 2024 · 43 minutes
How Ben McCarthy built a Salesforce-focused media company with 400,000 monthly readers

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   Ben McCarthy didn’t set out to create a media company focused on Salesforce, he just began... more

25 Apr 2024 · 42 minutes
How Joe Pulizzi built and sold The Tilt, a newsletter and conference business geared toward creators

Get $100 your CEX tickets by entering the discount code OWENS100   My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   When Joe Pulizzi launched... more

18 Apr 2024 · 45 minutes
How Brad Hargreaves built Thesis Driven, a newsletter and data product focused on real estate

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   When it comes to knowing all the intricacies of real estate investment, few are more knowledgeable... more

04 Apr 2024 · 56 minutes
How Andreas Sator built one of the most popular podcasts in Austria

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   I spend most of my time on this show interviewing entrepreneurs who founded English-language media outlets... more

27 Mar 2024 · 44 minutes
How to grow your audience in a post-Facebook world

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   Earlier this month, I sent a newsletter to my audience with the subject line: “Ask me... more

21 Mar 2024 · 1 hour, 2 minutes
How William Knight built Early Morning Media, a B2B newsletter company

Before William Knight launched Early Morning Media, he had worked for years at a company that specialized in sending press... more

19 Mar 2024 · 48 minutes
How Tom Arbuthnot built Empowering Cloud, a media comapany focused on Microsoft cloud products

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/    The rise of cloud computing introduced all sorts of benefits for the enterprise software space. Not... more

14 Mar 2024 · 35 minutes
How CJ Gustafson built Mostly Metrics, a newsletter for CFOs

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   I think everyone likes to think of themselves as being financially savvy, especially if, like me,... more

07 Mar 2024 · 42 minutes
How Sam Koslowski helped build The Daily Aus, a social first media outlet in Australia

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   For most of Instagram’s existence, it wasn’t thought of as a platform for distributing news, but... more

28 Feb 2024 · 43 minutes
The state of newsletter advertising in 2024

Subscribe to my newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   Ask about just any media executive, and they’ll tell you that the year 2023... more

21 Feb 2024 · 39 minutes
How Riad Chikhani built GAMURS Group, one of the largest gaming media companies in the world

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   By the time Riad Chikhani was 16 years old, he had already built a hugely successful... more

16 Feb 2024 · 57 minutes
How to monetize newsletters on LinkedIn

Earlier this month, I sent a newsletter to my audience with the subject line: “Ask me a question.” Basically I... more

12 Feb 2024 · 1 hour,
How Jack Kramer and Nick Martell sold their media company to Robinhood and then bought it back

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   When Jack Karmer and Nick Martell launched their daily newsletter Market Snacks in 2011, they kept... more

07 Feb 2024 · 54 minutes
How Cityside built a sustainable model for local news

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   It’s no secret that local journalism has struggled since the Great Recessions, with hundreds of newspapers... more

02 Feb 2024 · 57 minutes
How Lucas Grindley helped Next City grow to 1,000 paying members

Subscribe to my newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   Lucas Grindley knows something about building sustainable revenue streams for media companies. When he... more

24 Jan 2024 · 45 minutes
Will Spotify's audiobook streaming be good for authors?

Sign up for my newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   It’s been nearly five years since Spotify announced it would diversify its audio... more

18 Jan 2024 · 31 minutes
How Gabe Fleisher built Wake Up To Politics, a daily newsletter with over 50,000 subscribers

Subscribe to my newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   There are plenty of popular politics newsletters out there, but none with the kind... more

17 Jan 2024 · 44 minutes
The biggest difference between the Creator Economy and traditional media

Subscribe to my newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   Earlier this month, I sent a newsletter to my audience with the subject line:... more

12 Jan 2024 · 42 minutes
Will Buzzfeed file for bankruptcy in 2024?

It’s been a bad few years for Buzzfeed. After a disastrous IPO in 2022, it’s faced a tanking stock price,... more

05 Jan 2024 · 35 minutes
How Kelsey Ogletree built Pitchcraft, a membership community for PR pros

How do you write about the travel industry when people can’t fly on airplanes? That’s a question Kelsey Ogletree had... more

04 Jan 2024 · 38 minutes
How Ash Read built Living Cozy, a product review site monetized with ecommerce

Ash Read didn’t launch a review website about household products because of some lifelong interest in home decor; instead, his... more

05 Dec 2023 · 42 minutes
How Dylan Bowman built Freetrail, a media outlet for trail runners

For most of his career as professional ultra marathoner, Dylan Bowman didn’t have much of an online presence, but in... more

16 Nov 2023 · 49 minutes
How B2B publisher Skift scaled its business by diversifying its revenue streams

In 2011, Rafat Ali launched Skift, a B2B publisher that covers the travel industry. At first, Skift was mainly monetized... more

04 Sep 2023 · 55 minutes
How Starter Story ditched recurring payments and built a $1.5 million information product

Patrick Walls is the founder of Starter Story, an outlet that’s published thousands of case studies on how entrepreneurs built... more

22 Aug 2023 · 59 minutes
How Casey Keirnan built A.M. Hoops, a basketball YouTube channel with over 400,000 subscribers

It used to be if you wanted to break into broadcast media you first had to start small – by... more

25 Jul 2023 · 47 minutes
How Philip Ideson built The Art of Procurement, a B2B outlet that covers a $6 billion industry

If you run any sufficiently large organization, one of the biggest threats to your business is runaway costs. The largest... more

19 Jul 2023 · 42 minutes
How Eric Newcomer built his tech newsletter up to over 65,000 subscribers

There’s a common criticism lodged against Substack that its model of paid subscriptions could never support original journalism, and instead... more

11 Jul 2023 · 41 minutes
How Jay Shabat built Airline Weekly, one of the earliest newsletters covering the travel industry

When Jay Shabat launched his newsletter in 2004, he had absolutely no experience in journalism or in operating a media... more

06 Jul 2023 · 38 minutes
How JR Raphael built Android Intelligence, a thriving newsletter

Today, Android is the number one operating system for smartphones, but when Google launched the product in 2008, the iPhone... more

28 Jun 2023 · 51 minutes
Simon answers your questions

Subscribe to my newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/

31 May 2023 · 1 hour,
This YouTuber used his channel to launch a teaching platform

In some ways, Rahul Pandey’s career as a YouTuber has been pretty typical. After several years working at large tech... more

23 May 2023 · 40 minutes
This veteran journalist launched a thriving local news outlet

When it comes to creating content for online audiences, few people are more experienced than Mark Talkington. He was one... more

17 May 2023 · 1 hour, 3 minutes
Taking your subscription business to the next level

Of all the media revenue models, subscriptions can be the most tricky to execute well. There are just so many... more

09 May 2023 · 58 minutes
Has City Cast invented a new model for delivering local news?

The local news industry has seen better days. The last 15 years or so have been pockmarked with mass layoffs,... more

03 May 2023 · 43 minutes
This college professor built an incredibly popular newsletter about web tools

There’s this common saying you hear in academia: those who can’t do, teach. But that axiom certainly doesn’t apply to... more

25 Apr 2023 · 57 minutes
How The Reload newsletter became a leading authority on gun policy

It’s not very easy to find online coverage of the gun industry that isn’t hyper polarized. The issue is dominated... more

19 Apr 2023 · 50 minutes
How to monetize with online courses

While paid subscription models have been all the rage for the last decade, more and more creators are turning to... more

11 Apr 2023 · 57 minutes
This newsletter launched its own investment fund

Let’s say you have a pile of money you’re sitting on and you want to invest it. If you decide... more

04 Apr 2023 · 42 minutes
How Worldcrunch is bringing non-English content to a Western audience

Historically, foreign correspondents haven’t been the type of journalists who break major news stories in the countries they cover. That’s... more

29 Mar 2023 · 49 minutes
How Matt Navarra turned his marketing newsletter into a six-figure business

Before the major social platforms launch a new product, they’ll often run small experiments within a subset of their users... more

22 Mar 2023 · 1 hour, 2 minutes
How to build a career as a professional ghostwriter

We live in an era where every company is expected to operate as a media company and every business executive... more

14 Mar 2023 · 1 hour, 5 minutes
How Jay Gilbert built his influential music industry newsletter

When it comes to disruption, few industries have experienced as much upheaval over the past 20 years as the music... more

08 Mar 2023 · 46 minutes
How Stacked Marketer grew to over $600k in revenue

By the time Emanuel Cinca launched his Stacked Marketer newsletter around five years ago, he already had a successful affiliate... more

22 Feb 2023 · 50 minutes
Why The Financial Times launched an inexpensive mobile app

When it comes to distinctive newspaper designs, the print edition of The Financial Times stands out. The 135-year-old publication is... more

15 Feb 2023 · 49 minutes
How to launch a successful events business

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/welcome   As the media industry focuses on revenue diversification, more and more publishers are venturing into live... more

08 Feb 2023 · 1 hour, 11 minutes
How James Cridland built the most influential newsletter within the podcast industry

While podcasting has been around since the mid-aughts, it’s only within the last half decade that the industry started generating... more

31 Jan 2023 · 1 hour, 2 minutes
Overstory is one of the fastest-growing media companies in Canada

If you read articles about the state of local news, you’ll come away with a pretty pessimistic view of the... more

24 Jan 2023 · 1 hour, 6 minutes
How to build a successful B2B media company

B2B used to be the least sexy space in media, but in the last decade we’ve seen a new crop... more

06 Jan 2023 · 1 hour, 22 minutes
How Matt Brown built a thriving newsletter around the business of college sports

Visit https://memberful.com/simonowens Matt Brown didn’t set off to build his own solo newsletter business, but he fell into it after... more

30 Nov 2022 · 53 minutes
How Roca News grew to 1.1 million Instagram subscribers

Visit Memberful: http://memberful.com/simonowens   When the media outlet Roca News launched in the year 2020, it started creating just about... more

26 Oct 2022 · 47 minutes
Uncovered is building the largest community for true crime enthusiasts

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   You’ve probably noticed that true crime is having a bit of a moment right now. Podcasts dedicated... more

19 Oct 2022 · 43 minutes
He sold his newsletter to a climate tech company

Visit https://signup.whosponsorsstuff.com/sales-pro/?source=simonowenspodcast   Louie Woodall knows his way around a financial disclosure document. Since graduating college, he’s worked for... more

28 Sep 2022 · 40 minutes
How Libsyn plans to challenge Spotify for podcast dominance

Visit Memberful: https://memberful.com/simonowens   The podcast industry is around 17 years old, and Libsyn was among the first companies launched... more

14 Sep 2022 · 42 minutes
How The Future Party grew its newsletter to 150,000 subscribers

Check out the News Guest podcast: https://bit.ly/news-guest   When Boye Fajinmi started hosting parties with a few of his friends,... more

31 Aug 2022 · 36 minutes
How publishers can drive more subscription revenue

Get a 10% discount on a subscription: https://simonowens.substack.com/a30836c1   It’s incredibly difficult to convert your audience from free readers/viewers/listeners into... more

28 Aug 2022 · 52 minutes
Why Brandi Kruse left her lucrative TV news career to launch her own podcast

Visit Memberful: https://memberful.com/simonowens In terms of career advancement, Brandi Kruse was at the top of her game. As a TV... more

17 Aug 2022 · 39 minutes
How Stacker created a newswire for data journalism

Visit Memberful: http://memberful.com/simonowens   Over the past decade, several major media companies have invested in building out their data journalism... more

03 Aug 2022 · 49 minutes
Inside Morning Brew's video strategy

Visit SparkLoop: https://sparkloop.app/partner-network?utm_campaign=simonowens   If you’re aware of Morning Brew, it’s probably because of its daily business newsletter. Since... more

20 Jul 2022 · 42 minutes
Do people want longform Twitter content?

Visit SparkLoop: https://sparkloop.app/?utm_campaign=simonowens If there’s one thing Twitter’s known for, it’s character limits. It famously only allowed 140 of... more

30 Jun 2022 · 54 minutes
He transformed a B2B sports magazine into a thriving media company

Visit Video Husky: https://bit.ly/vh-simon-owens-pod   When Nick Meacham first joined SportsPro in 2010, it mainly existed as a B2B print... more

16 Jun 2022 · 50 minutes
The Long Story with Simon Owens
Uncovered is building the largest community for true crime enthusiastsUncovered is building the largest community for true crime enthusiastsUncovered is building the largest community for true crime enthusiastsUncovered is building the largest community for true crime enthusiasts
The Long Story with Simon Owens
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Listen now on

Apple Podcasts
Spotify
Overcast
Podcast Addict
Pocket Casts
Castbox
Podbean
iHeartRadio
Player FM
Podcast Republic
Castro
RSS

Description

My newsletter: https://simonowens.substack.com/   You’ve probably noticed that true crime is having a bit of a moment right now. Podcasts dedicated to the... more