Independent Journal Review

Alex Skatell's journey into media began in college when he developed iPhone applications, including a top 25 app featured in Gizmodo. But his real vision emerged earlier: a platform called thenews.com ("News with the U") where people could publish and distribute their own news. Though the Night News Foundation grant application failed, the dream persisted. After college, he worked in DC at the Senatorial Committee and Governor's Association, where he witnessed the seismic shift in how people consumed news. The homepage was dead. Social feeds and email inboxes had become the new distribution channels—yet news companies weren't effectively leveraging them.

In 2012, Alex launched Independent Journal Review from a small apartment in Charleston, South Carolina, investing his savings and weekly paychecks into a single mission: reaching audiences that mainstream media overlooked. He didn't chase venture capital. Instead, he bootstrapped initially, then brought in friends and family who believed in his vision. Over time, he raised approximately $2.5 million—entirely from friends and family, with zero institutional money, keeping the publication truly independent. The company's structure evolved into three branches: the newsroom (eventually 50+ reporters and writers), a technology division building proprietary tools and applications, and an agency arm providing audience segmentation, analytics, and content distribution services.

Alex focused obsessively on distribution. He built one of the largest email lists in media—700,000 subscribers—and pioneered segmentation so each reader received a personalized email based on their engagement history. This wasn't out-of-the-box marketing; the team built the segmentation logic internally with four dedicated people analyzing recency, frequency, and channel preferences. He leveraged Twitter, Facebook, and Vine (where IJR became known for one of the most active accounts), and empowered reporters to become distribution channels themselves. The strategy worked: within years, Independent Journal Review became a top 50 website in the country, generating 20-25 million unique monthly visitors.

The core insight was that audience size, frequency of reach, and engagement mattered far more than fancy technology. While competitors bragged about custom content management systems as competitive advantages, Alex realized those were moats made of sand. He moved to WordPress like everyone else eventually would. What truly mattered was relationships with readers. Programmatic advertising alone couldn't sustain quality journalism—a $0.01 CPM on a story that moves elections made no sense. Alex began experimenting with digital subscription models, recognizing that the New York Times and Wall Street Journal were heading the same direction: print was eroding, and digital advertising alone wouldn't fund serious newsrooms. The company remained profitable every month, with total monthly expenses in the six figures, flexible depending on growth investments.

By the time of this interview, Independent Journal Review was employing 50+ reporters and writers covering politics and current events. The company had attracted talent from prestigious outlets—one of his key hires, Hunter Schwartz, came from the Washington Post and BuzzFeed. Alex had built a media empire with three distinct revenue streams and operational divisions, all while maintaining independence and profitability. His vision of understanding distribution channels—"the new printing press"—had proven prescient. Rather than chase the SaaS route and scale his proprietary tools into a billion-dollar platform, he chose focus: the tools existed to serve his newsroom's competitive advantage, which was its audience. At 29, single, and working far fewer than eight hours of sleep per night, Alex embodied the scrappy startup ethos he admired in FedEx founder Fred Smith.