We’re almost ready to roll out our resource guide to the companies the La Fronde community vouches for as reliable and that actually pay people on time! If you haven’t turned in your submission yet, you can do that here. This guide will be available to paid members soon, though any free members who submit recommendations will also get access to the list. A big thank you to everyone who’s contributed so far.

And a small housekeeping note: Tuesday’s paid newsletter is going out a little earlier on Oct. 13 (at 12:30 p.m. ET), because we’ve got a La Fronde exclusive to drop! Stay tuned.

Today’s free newsletter features Brittney’s chat with the ladies of ‘The Moment LIVE,’ which is a fun spin on the old-school radio call-in shows from back in the day. They had an interesting take on why the left doesn’t need its own Joe Rogan.

I’ve also got updates on some big moves happening at The Washington Post and intel on why creators are calling out LinkedIn for reportedly suppressing their posts about the Cornell case, plus more, in Seen and Heard. We’ve also got our usual roundup of fresh job postings — including one where you can get paid to listen to ‘Hard Fork’ shows.

xoxo,

Stephanie

Meredith Lynch and Rebecca Sananès met in the comment section of a Whitney Cummings video on TikTok. They were united against what the pair called a “bad take” on Ukraine, and in that comment section, magic was born. They started scheming in real life, and in 2025 launched ‘The Moment LIVE’ on TikTok, a politics and culture commentary show marrying the charm of old-school radio call-in shows with the viral potential of internet clip culture. 

The show grew quickly, expanding to Substack, YouTube and Spotify. Rebecca has a traditional journalism background, with experience that includes serving as lead producer on ‘Pivot with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway’ and heading up audio at Archewell, the company founded by Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Meredith is a writer, comedian and social strategist with an “uncanny ability” to suss out virality online. Together, they’ve carved out a loyal fanbase of about 500,000 followers, largely made up of Gen Z and Millennial women — and that audience is likely to grow thanks to their newly inked deal with Lemonada Media. 

Airing Tuesdays and Fridays, ‘The Moment LIVE’ feels like a familiar conversation with your friends. Listening to some of their latest episodes, I was reminded of my group chat with my girlfriends from college, where we effortlessly move from a heavy debate on a political topic to an in-depth and hilarious analysis of ‘The Real Housewives.’ For this week’s Maxed Out, Rebecca and Meredith talked to us about creating community, finding success in the current media landscape and why we need to abandon the idea of a Joe Rogan for the left.

I was just listening to your episode about the Cornell case and Lindsay Clancy trial. It very much feels like how I would talk to my girlfriends: we're talking about something really heavy, something of cultural and political significance, but we're throwing a ‘Real Housewives’ reference in and we're having a giggle. How did you land on this tone and format?

Meredith: In the beginning, when we were conceptualizing this show, we were like, we want to do a younger version of ‘The View’ that's more internet-focused. When we started doing episodes, we realized, oh, this isn't ‘The View.’ This is the fifth hour of the ‘Today Show,’ but with harder-hitting news stories. And the thing that I think you feel on the last hour of the ‘Today Show’ versus ‘The View’ is that  these people leave and they're friends. We definitely disagree on some things, but I think we're able to do it in a way where we're friends and we can disagree and we can look at each other's perspectives.

And even though clip culture is huge, we don't purposely rage bait one another or our audience to try to drive clicks, but we are going to have some really tough conversations sometimes. 

Rebecca: There are so many places to get rage bait. There are a few places to get original, factual reporting. I think what we offer is processing. We are here to chew on it with you a little bit longer than it would take to scroll, but not in a way that feels overwhelming or inundated or alienating.

Who do you consider your main audience? 

Rebecca: Millennial women, Gen Z women on the internet. I think you really hit the nail on the head when you said we're sort of like the group chat out loud. 

Meredith: The other thing that we're seeing in terms of the demographic is it's a lot of women who are working full-time and they’re caregivers, whether it be for children or for aging parents. So they're busy and they're on the move and they want a place where they can hear these stories without feeling like, ‘oh my gosh, I'm just getting like these quick Reels and I'm being inundated with the breaking news.’ They want a little bit of community as well. I think that's another thing that we have because we are a live show. [What’s] been really fun is to see our live community really bond together. We have people who watch this show religiously. They tune in at 8 a.m. and then they're in the chat, which is so fun because they have their own little inside jokes, they have their own community. And then the other thing that we get to do that I think is really unique is we're able to engage with the chat. We can jump in and answer a comment — and we don't just answer the comments that are like “Meredith and Rebecca, you're so smart and talented.” We take the hard questions, just like back in the days of a call-in radio show. 

Rebecca: What we're, in part, trying to do is reinvent what worked very, very well about old-school institutions that we're seeing fall apart. How do you bring what was great about [those once-popular call-in shows] to an internet audience and blend what's great about having an internet audience into that?

I [spent] my 20s and 30s in a really traditional journalism background. I was at NPR, I won a Murrow Award, I have my master’s in journalism. I took what's great about that thorough, thoughtful journalism and then Meredith has this uncanny ability to have an antenna for what the internet is talking about and build community around it. I think between the two of us, we're able to build something [that feels] new and old together.

You're speaking to a very powerful audience. These are people who have purchasing power, political power, a lot of underestimated power. What do you make of that? And how do you consider that when you're figuring out what to cover?

Meredith: I think one of the best things I can think of is, we had on [Rep.] Joaquin Castro. He talked to us a little bit about the realities of the Dilley detention facility and that basically started us on this wild goose chase where we were like, well, how do people get commissary at the Dilley detention facility? What is life like there? How do you get sent money? I think those things are really well established in prisons, but with these detention facilities being so new and also the fact that there are children there — Dilley is the only facility that houses children with their parents. We ended up connecting with a nonprofit called Each Step Home. They were able to help us facilitate this very quickly. We were like, we're going to raise some money for moms on Mother's Day to fill up commissary accounts at Dilley and we're going to see if our audience is interested. And we were like, if we get $1,000 for these accounts, fantastic.

We ended up, in 72 hours, raising $115,000 from our audience. First of all, that told us our audience has huge purchasing power. They are willing to take out their wallets. They're willing to spend. They have huge trust in us. The other thing that I would say is, these are women who hear these stories, whether it be the Dilley detention facility or what's happening in the Cornell case, and they also want to take action. I think many people right now hear these stories and then they just sink in deeper — and I don't blame them. But our audience is very action-oriented, too. 

As we head into the midterms, is that 'action-oriented' audience mindset something you're taking into consideration when booking guests?

Rebecca: We've highlighted a couple of key races. We have Dr. Abdul El-Sayed coming on later this month. We've had Dr. Annie Andrews, Gina Hinojosa, who's running for governor in Texas. And so we've tried to highlight some of the major races, possible flips. But we're not there to tell you who to vote for or what to vote for. 

Meredith: For the rest of this month, we have Jools [Lebron] coming on from the “very demure” trend. We want to have a conversation with Jools that's about internet culture, but also the mental health piece. Jools is also a trans woman of color, whose rights are under attack. So I think bringing in the folks that we can have both the pop culture and the political conversations with is really important to us. 

We recently had on former MTV Teen Mom [star] Farrah Abraham. Farrah is running for city council in Austin, Texas. So, it's an opportunity to have a conversation that's both political, but also have some of these conversations about children on reality TV or money in reality television. Those are political at this point, and I think our audience is able to realize that.

There was a lot of talk about podcasters and their role in the last presidential election. There was a big to-do about finding the left's Joe Rogan. What do you think about that idea?

Rebecca: First of all, I don't think this imagination of Joe Rogan [is right]. Joe Rogan was neither left nor right, necessarily. He was a pop culture figure who ended up wading into politics and then ended up interviewing Trump and it became a big thing. And I think, by the way, that's part of why we're interested in the pop culture of it all. You cannot take politics out of pop culture and vice versa.

But I don't think there is a Joe Rogan on the left. I think that there are a bunch of conduits to a bunch of different conversations. And I think women don't want a Joe Rogan of the left. They want community and activation.

Meredith: I also think that the leftist media landscape is more fractured. Rebecca has made a couple of good points about folks like the comedian Stavros [Halkias]. [He’s] becoming almost the Joe Rogan of the left, except he's a much more talented comedian. 

But I think the thing about leftist spaces is people are looking for things that sort of suit them and can fit into the box that they're in a little bit better. One of the things that the right does that really works for them is they're able to look at somebody and let there be disagreements and let there be things where they land in different places. And on the left, I think we have a harder time with that. We had a lot of feedback of people being upset with us that we had Farrah Abraham on. And I think the thing that the right does really well is when they see something that they don't fully agree with from one of their pundits, they kind of keep it moving.

So, I don't know that we will ever have a Joe Rogan of the left. And I think that's also okay.

You talked about the magic of having this as a live show. Why did you decide to make it a live show rather than a pre-recorded podcast or YouTube show?

Rebecca: As with all things with this show, it's been strangely organic. The truth is that Meredith and I were shopping around the show. We were playing with ideas. We were going to do it as a podcast and a video podcast and we were talking to a couple of companies about distribution partnerships and they were slow-moving. We looked at one another and we were

like, you know what? Let's just start going live on TikTok and see what kind of audience we can generate. And so we started literally going live on the app at the same time that we now do—Tuesdays at 8 a.m.—and we started to generate an audience. Then we were like, "Okay, let's have a guest." I had Rep. Ro Khanna’s information from my previous job and we asked him to come on. Suddenly we had a show that people were looking at. 

Then we started having guests that were big enough that they were like, “oh, we want to do it, but we don't want to be on TikTok specifically.” We moved over to Streamyard, which is able to simulcast across platforms and then we hit number 25 on the Substack charts. And so it really was one of those things where it was like, let's just put one foot in front of the other and we just expanded on what worked over and over again until we suddenly have a show with a deal with Lemonada. 

Meredith: Doing it live meant that we could be responding so quickly to the topics that are at hand. As you know, the news cycle is—I mean somebody the other day was like, “it's about three days.” It's more like three hours. The other day, Clavicular had been charged [with rape] like right before the show. So, we can cover Clavicular and that puts us as one of the first people who are talking about it live. Then we can also turn around the clips really quickly, as opposed to like, “hey on Tuesdays we go record the show and then it comes out on Friday.” So that's another advantage to it as well. 

Tell me a bit about the deal with Lemonada. What does that mean for the show and what can we expect next?

Rebecca: It's year two for us. So, if year one was really about building the foundation and the audience, now we have a partner that we are working to amplify that whole thing and bring it to new audiences, bring it to bigger audiences with this infrastructure and help. And then I think the other thing is we're really experimenting with the future of ad sales that are holistic across multiple platforms. Part of why we're really excited to work with [Lemonada] is experimenting with the many ways we can work with brand sponsors across platforms and [on a live show] I think that's going to be a big new thing for us.

Now, our classic Maxed Out questions: What are you reading, watching, seeing, hearing? What are your favorite corners of the internet? 

Rebecca: ‘East of Eden’ is my favorite book of all time, so I was watching the [Netflix] series this weekend and then also in the background I was listening to the audiobook to remind myself of which parts she was adapting versus not adapting. 

Meredith: I'm going to rewatch ‘Real World: San Francisco’ from the '90s. I've been thinking a lot about Rachel Campos-Duffy and Sean Duffy. And then also the story of Pedro Zamora, who was one of the first openly gay HIV-positive men [on TV]. His story is so amazing and when you think about it juxtaposed against these big political figures who came from reality TV—we always say Trump is a reality star, but [Rachel and Sean Duffy], these people became famous because they were reality stars. 

I am also a big clip watcher. A bad thing that I do is I'll watch an entire movie in clips on my phone. I would never sit down and watch ‘The Age of Adaline,’ but I've watched [enough] clips of it on my phone.

And what is your phone screen time?

Rebecca: Brutal. Oh, brutal!

Meredith: I mean, my screen time is absolutely unhinged. Like, I have to be rivaling Taylor Lorenz. When Taylor gave her screen time and everyone was like, “what are you talking about?” But at the same time, if I was working at a full-time job on a computer I would probably be on the computer like seven hours a day and my phone is essentially my computer. So, I'm probably online for like seven hours a day. 

You're shocked, Rebecca?

Rebecca: No, I'm shocked that it's so low. My screen time is, like, average 12 hours. It's crazy what kind of screen time I have. Also, I use my phone for music. I use my phone for meditation. It's sort of unfair at this point to be like, “what is your screen time?” Because my screen time includes meditation, music for when I'm running. My screen time includes videos of me doing pole dancing. 

I gave the same answer when I had to give up my screen time. I was like, it's absolutely unfair because that includes me using Google Maps or listening to a podcast.

Rebecca: Exactly. Thank you. I was shocked at seven hours because to me… 

Meredith: It's probably [more than seven hours] but I'm not checking it. It's like my checking account balance — I don’t want to look at that. I don't want to know!

What we’re seeing and hearing around the industry.

The Washington Post is making moves. We’re starting to get a clearer picture about what the future holds for The Washington Post after its sweeping layoffs back in February.

To start, the newsroom is launching two new video podcasts featuring some of its most popular advice columnists, Michelle Singletary and Carolyn Hax. Michelle will give financial advice on everyday money questions on her show, ‘Dollars & Sense,’ premiering Oct. 13. Meanwhile, Carolyn will pair up with The Post’s pop culture reporter Shane O’Neill to answer viewers’ “messiest, toughest and most debatable relationship questions” on ‘Life Hax,’ premiering Oct. 15. As a side note, I always watch Carolyn’s videos when I’m scrolling. She and the producers pick the most excellent and batshit questions for her to weigh in on. You have to wonder how some of these people asking for advice function in the real world (I’ll never forget the guy who asked his deceased wife’s friend for a hookup right after she died and wondered why the friend didn’t say yes. Come on, bro!). 

Michelle and Carolyn have some of the most loyal followings in the newsroom, so it makes total sense for WaPo to leverage that audience to grow its video podcast slate. Both shows will be published weekly (Dollars & Sense on Tuesdays and Life Hax on Thursdays), each with a runtime of 30–50 minutes. Executive producer Reena Flores shared some details with me about The Post’s video podcast strategy: 

“We're focused on creating sustainable, compelling programming for our audio and video products. We’re partnering with Acast to build commercial opportunities and help scale production. And across our company, we’re thoughtfully developing formats that offer our audiences the best reporting and voices the Post has to offer.”

Meanwhile, The Post’s Style desk is looking for a style politics and culture editor to cover the intersection of culture and power in Washington. This beat has become a big priority for publishers (WSJ and The Washington Sun have recently hired for similar roles) because of how loyal the audience is for this content. Outlets like Puck, Punchbowl and Politico have shown that this beat is worth investing in because publishers can make serious money off it.

And, finally, The Post announced today that media vet Alex Wallace is joining the fold as its new chief operating officer. Interestingly, the newsroom didn’t have a COO for several years. Her appointment is a part of new CEO Jeff D'Onofrio’s vision to restructure the leadership team and get the company to profitability. Alex seems like she has the right pedigree to help bring The Post over the finish line — before taking the COO job, she held senior growth roles at newsrooms like Yahoo!, where she was EVP and head of media and content, helping the company diversify its revenue streams and grow its audience.

Have a tip for me? Send it to stephanie@la-fronde.com or my Signal if you want to keep things confidential (itsstephwill.94).

Wendy McMahon returns. Merzigo, a digital distribution company, just hired former CBS head honcho Wendy McMahon to lead its U.S. expansion. She’ll be a helpful bridge in connecting Merzigo to U.S. television companies and unlocking some new library content. Merzigo's business model is smart because the company helps studios redistribute their legacy shows onto other platforms like YouTube and TikTok to build consistent, incremental revenue. It might seem like a waste of money to hire external help — studios could technically do all that themselves. But cutting soundbites for social media or dubbing video content into other languages takes a lot of time and effort that could be done more efficiently by one-stop resources like Merzigo. 

I think we’ll begin to see more media startups emerging to help other media companies adapt to the digital era. Run-a-Muck, the brainchild of ex-Condé exec Pam Drucker Mann and ‘The L Word’ alums Ilene Chaiken and Jennifer Beals, is another shop that’s found success by helping TV and movie studios develop new off-platform projects from their IPs. Along with Run-a-Muck, former Substack executives Austin Tedesco and Catherine Valentine recently launched their own consulting company, Spur, to help media companies utilize A.I. to diversify their membership features and create new revenue streams. These startups have slightly different business objectives, but the throughline is all the same: help companies make the most of the ideas they’ve already got. 

Is LinkedIn secretly suppressing political content? Straight Arrow News interviewed several creators who suspect LinkedIn’s algorithm is suppressing their posts on the Cornell case. On top of that, one creator said she saw overall engagement to her account drop after posting about the case, leading to speculation from these creators that LinkedIn might be deliberately silencing political posts altogether. The platform tweaked its algorithm in the last year to an AI-powered model that’s reportedly meant to better personalize the content that shows up on people’s feeds. But is it also secretly burying political posts? LinkedIn didn’t respond to Straight Arrow News’s request for comment. For the sake of my mental health, I’m not really scrolling that much on LinkedIn these days, so I can’t give my own anecdotal confirmation on this. Have any of you seen a difference? 

A new show wants to clock misinformation. Former Congressional Black Caucus executive director and general counsel Angela Rye just launched a new YouTube show called ‘Cite Your Source,’ where a roundtable of panelists talk about current events as they’re fact-checked in real time. The fact checker on the show even has a buzzer that they press when someone messes up a fact — they run a strict program over there! I would be nervous as hell about slipping up if I went on that show, but I’m digging the concept. Can you imagine if Fox News had something like this? Never in our lifetime!

And finally, Xbox is for the girls. With the latest appointments, three prominent Xbox leadership roles will be held by women. The gaming company is launching a new entertainment division, XP, that will be helmed by Kayleen Walters (who previously led Mojang Studios, the Xbox-owned developer behind Minecraft). With that promotion, Maria Angelidou-Smith will take her spot at Mojang, and both women will report to Xbox CEO Asha Sharma. Another example of an entertainment company developing their own original programming instead of just outsourcing that work to other production companies. The licensing opportunities are real!