How Dave Jorgenson Built a Creator-Led Media Company With beehiiv

Situation:

Dave Jorgenson spent nearly five years building The Washington Post’s TikTok into a massive audience, growing it to nearly two million followers. For many young viewers, he was the brand.

In mid-2025, Jorgenson left The Post with Lauren Saks and Micah Gelman to launch Local News International (LNI), a creator-led newsroom built around video, newsletters, and direct audience relationships.

The goal was simple: stop building on borrowed platforms and start owning the audience.

Challenge:

Going independent created three immediate challenges:

• Audience ownership: Millions followed Jorgenson on social platforms, but none of that guaranteed they would move to a channel he controlled.
• Early monetization: LNI needed sustainable revenue without ads-first pressure or a large sales operation.
• Operational scale: A three-person team needed infrastructure that worked out of the box without custom tooling.

Without solving these, LNI risked recreating the same platform dependency Jorgenson had just left.

Solution:

LNI built its owned-media foundation on beehiiv.

• Newsletter as the hub: Short-form video drove discovery, while the beehiiv newsletter became the primary destination for deeper context and audience connection.
• Automations: beehiiv onboarding and cadence automations handled growth without manual work.
• Built-in growth: Boosts and referrals brought in new subscribers without paid ads.
• Membership monetization: Paid subscriptions enabled LNI to monetize directly through its most engaged readers.
• Analytics: Engagement data informed content and cadence decisions in real time.

beehiiv allowed the team to focus on journalism and storytelling while the platform handled infrastructure.

Results:

Within months of launch:

• LNI reached five-figure newsletter subscribers
• Open rates averaged around 60 percent
• Click-through rates exceeded 10 percent
• Memberships became the primary early revenue stream
• Growth continued without paid acquisition or a sales team

Most importantly, LNI owned its audience relationship from day one.

Jorgenson’s move shows the shift happening across media. Audiences follow people, not institutions, and sustainable media businesses are built on owned distribution.

beehiiv gave LNI the tools to turn attention into ownership, engagement into revenue, and a small team into a scalable media operation.

Start using beehiiv to build a media business you actually own.