About
Randy Cassingham created This is True in 1994. It’s one of the first for-profit email publications on the Internet, and is still publishing every week.
Educated as a journalist, Randy was not interested in a career as a reporter: he wanted…
…to skip directly to syndicated columnist. But syndicates aren’t interested in untested talent, and newspapers had already started their downhill slide, so he instead became a technical publisher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. — “a great place to work,” Randy says, “if you have to work for someone else.”
At the time there was precious little content available online. Long the bastion of nerds and academics, even the thought of commercial activity on the Internet was discouraged. There was no business model for Randy to follow when he came up with his idea for a weird news commentary column, so he created his own. In essence, he realized that his earlier dream of being a syndicated columnist could be accomplished online: he could use the Internet to bypass the gatekeepers of newspaper editors and large syndication agencies and speak directly to his audience.
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This Is True