Thursday, October 15, 2026
Diners pick restaurants by how they look online. Creator Asher Lara's Iconify Media wants to fill those seats. The test is whether his instincts work at scale.
A single operator with a camera, an editing suite and a beat is becoming the dominant local video news format, and the economics finally work.
The one-writer newsletter boom created thousands of small media businesses. Now the successful ones are buying each other, hiring staff and turning into what they replaced.
Solo publications and small newsrooms are multiplying, powered by cheap tools, direct payment rails and an advertising market that finally learned to buy small.