I’ve always loved the news business. When I was a kid, I would walk a mile to the deli in order to grab a copy of The New York Times, or sit in the library obsessing over old issues of The New Yorker or Spy. Later, when some of my favorite publications began to experiment with putting their journalism online, I was an early believer in the promise of the digital revolution to spread information and provocative ideas far and wide. And I’ve remained an optimist about the media’s future—even amidst the usual sky-is-falling proclamations, such as that nobody reads anymore or nobody will pay for journalism. I would politely disagree, and I’d like to think that my success belies the shortsightedness of media cynics.