One important thing about me is that, as the youngest of four, if you tell me to stop making a joke out of something, it only makes me more powerful and persistent. I got to elaborate on this more in my interview with KCUR last Friday, where I also explained why our parent company is called Family Loser, LLC. I will run a joke, or an impression of a political figure, into the ground.

This is true for President Trump in both his terms, as well as President Biden. When I debuted my Biden impression in 2023 on the Washington Post accounts, many of our left-leaning viewers were mad that I was openly poking fun at Biden. Making fun of Biden meant making it easier for Trump to win, they reasoned.

But to me, it seemed very relevant that watching the president was like listening to a podcast at 0.5x speed. I also poked fun at the fact that Biden had promised to be a one term president, but we had all breezed right past that when he announced he was running again.

If you look at the comment section from the video above, people clearly agreed. My goofy time travel joke unearthed the truth about the near future: that most liberals weren’t even excited about Biden running again.

Following Biden’s debate performance over a year later, commenters returned to echo this sentiment:

Comedy was the only way to unearth the truth: Biden was not popular enough to win re-election and many liberals and members of the media were too afraid to say it.

Sometimes, comedy is the only thing that pierces through. In our age of relentless news and media on your phone, TV, and even your kitchen appliances, sometimes it all becomes a dial tone in the background you ignore. But comedians and journalists alike using satire to point out real issues can, and does, make a difference.

I’m not afraid of President Trump, who is hellbent on firing or unplugging anyone who dares speak out against him. Maybe it’s my youngest sibling syndrome. Maybe it’s because we’re an independent media source that’s not dependent on the F.C.C. Or perhaps it’s because I look so much like the vice president, that I can just pretend Local News International is yet another media venture he’s taken on while becoming host of Charlie Kirk’s podcast.

Whatever the case, I can and will continue to make fun of our president. I’m not intimidated by him and I hate bullies. Also, it’s really fun to wear my tie super long and imitate his cartoonish behavior:

Jon Stewart’s contract ends soon, and it’s unclear if Paramount will renew it. Colbert is on his way out and Kimmel is out indefinitely. Local News International was born out of legacy media and we are not a comedy show, but we are a source of news that uses comedy. It’s important to keep making fun of everything that’s happening, left and right. I hope you’ll support us as we continue to tackle news both local and international.

Forming Local News International, or LNI, meant handling a million things at once. Luckily, I had my co-founders Lauren Saks and Micah Gelman to help get things off the ground quickly, including everything from libel insurance to starting a bank account, to just making sure my videos are not filled with errors (thanks again, Lauren).

Yet another endeavor we’ve taken on is building a website, and a unique look to go along with it. Our incredible graphics designer Sarah Hashemi translated all the gibberish and ideas I sent her way. She came up with the new banners on our YouTube and Snapchat page. She’s even responsible for the new thumbnail when you share LNI.media - which you should share, with everyone!

Sarah also mocked up a beautiful design for our site. But then that design had to be turned into an actual, functional website.

Enter: Ryan Gilbert. Ryan works for beehiiv, the magical, buzzy company that hosts our newsletters and website (yes, 'beehiiv’ is spelled that way and all lowercase. It’s part of the charm!).

As a member of beehiiv’s Media Collective, LNI has had access to Ryan from day one. I asked him some questions below about how he managed to put this all together. Spoiler alert: he did succeed and the site is live now.

Another spoiler alert: it’s beautiful. Ryan crushed it. Read his answers to my questions below:

I joined beehiiv in February 2025 to help successful journalists like you make the transition from legacy media to starting and growing your own independent media company through our Media Collective initiative. 

I’m now working with 20+ Media Collective journalists that have joined beehiiv, helping with everything from platform knowledge to general newsletter strategy.

I’d argue that you actually got stuck with me … LNI is the first publication that I’ve worked with that has a strong (primarily?) video presence. I’ve thankfully been able to  learn a lot just watching your team from the sidelines as you’ve turned viral short-form videos into paying newsletter subscribers. 

The number one goal of building out a website for a new publisher on beehiiv is to give them something that they’re proud to share and call their own.

That normally starts by asking for their overall goals … are you hoping to monetize through ads, paid subscriptions, a mix of both? What pages are crucial from day one? Do you have a color palette in mind? Basic questions that help both sides start thinking about what the final website might look like once all the puzzle pieces are put together. 

Then, I will ask if they have any inspiration from other websites or newsletters that they’d like to replicate and put their own spin on in some way. This inspiration doesn’t need to come from other beehiiv websites either, in fact, it’s probably better if it doesn’t as we begin to think about what is possible for something new.

For your site specifically, we knew that we would be iterating as we went vs having everything 100% set for a hard launch date which we sometimes need to do. This allowed us to begin work before your mockups were ready so that you could begin promoting your move. 

After I built your v1, I received your mockups which put aspects of my design to shame (haha!). This allowed me to begin working closely with someone else on our side to bring some of your design-centered elements like the scrolling bars to life. 

The biggest challenge was definitely that you and your team already had a very clear vision for what your brand and website should be — even before sending me the early mockups. 

I knew that it would be video focused but I hadn’t worked with anyone that was producing more video content than written content. 

Those two things definitely led to me staring at the blank canvas longer than usual.

Thankfully, we were building tools internally that would help make this video content more integrated without requiring more manual work and curation from your end.

We recently released our YouTube RSS feature that allows publishers to easily plug their YouTube videos and playlists into their beehiiv websites, automatically updating whenever a creator uploads a new video. 

You were one of the very first publications on the platform to test this out which was great because in a way it felt like this feature was specifically built for you.

Prior to this feature release, we would have needed to add a custom html block that we would have needed to manually update anytime you released a new video. 

Trust me when I say that this feature came at the perfect time.

Am I allowed to say my own website? 

I actually worked closely with another employee at beehiiv (shoutout to Steven) who created a near 1:1 copy of my Webflow site in beehiiv.

Due to reasons outside of my control, I needed to migrate off of Webflow in a hurry and get everything moved over to beehiiv. 

I wanted the first version on beehiiv to be as close to what my readers had come to expect over the past 500 interviews.

My mom, who has zero idea what my newsletter is actually about and is confused how it makes money, confirmed that we did a great job with that.

While he was doing that for the main site, I was able to create a new and bold /subscribe page that I would start linking to on social media. This page was a fun exercise in starting from scratch with the simple goal of creating a page that would convert page views to email sign ups — nothing else. 

Outside of my own which was a cheap answer, I’ve really enjoyed iterating on Lachlan Cartwright’s Breaker Media site. He trusts me enough to allow me the freedom to make tweaks and offer suggestions that I think will benefit him in the long run.

I am forever in debt to Ryan at beehiiv, as well as the whole LNI team, for keeping this weird boat afloat. See you all Friday, when Chris goes deeper into all the strange videos I make this week (but Thursday, if you’re a paying member!).

And remember: send me photos of your pets at [email protected]. We’re actively rotating out all the pets we get on our site, so make sure to check for yours. Would love to seem some animals that aren’t dogs and cats too (please don’t take this personally, dogs and cats. I love you).