Laurene Powell Jobs. Today's Katharine Graham.

"To do what you wanna do, to leave a mark – in a way that you think is important and lasting – that's a life well-lived." - Laurene Powell Jobs

Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Steve Jobs, has largely stayed out of the spotlight since his death, choosing instead to focus her energy on quietly but powerfully shaping the world through philanthropy, education, climate action, and journalism. So many fabulous women working tirelessly without glory toward a better world, so few men. And while she hasn’t made headlines for dramatic statements or splashy appearances, make no mistake my friends. She is a force. Through her organization, Emerson Collective, she owns a majority stake in The Atlantic, a magazine that, if we’re being honest, should really be called The Atlantic Daily by now, considering how urgently we need its kind of journalism every single day.

Laurene met Steve Jobs in 1989 when she was a 25-year-old MBA student at Stanford, and he was giving a lecture. He asked her out in the parking lot after the talk. They married in 1991 and had three children together. But she is not a woman whose story begins or ends with someone else’s legend. After Steve’s death in 2011, she inherited a fortune—billions in Apple and Disney stock—and she could have done anything. Private islands. Couture-filled closets. Ladies lunching. A quiet life far from the noise. Instead, she built Emerson Collective—an investment and philanthropic powerhouse focused on education reform, immigration policy, climate change, and social justice. The name was inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and its ethos reflects a belief in the power of individuals to bring about collective good.

Laurene is famously private, but the glimpses we do get of her are revealing. A former teacher, she is deeply engaged in educational equity and launched XQ Institute to rethink the American high school. She has said in interviews that she is not interested in incremental change—she wants transformational change. She’s visited schools across the country herself, sitting in classrooms, talking to students, listening more than speaking. She’s not one to parachute in with a grant and disappear, although other women are doing that successfully as well.

When it comes to journalism, she’s put her money and her name behind it not as an accessory, but as a moral imperative. She purchased a majority stake in The Atlantic in 2017, not to remake it, but to reinforce its mission—to preserve a space for ideas, for integrity, for actual public service through the written word. And she’s stayed behind the scenes while the editors do their job, and making sure they have the runway to do it.

If you haven’t rewatched The Post recently (and yes, I mean the one with Meryl Streep as Katharine Graham and Tom Hanks doing his gruff editor thing), this might be the week to do it. There’s a scene—no spoilers, promise—where Graham has to decide whether to publish the Pentagon Papers, knowing full well she might not just lose the paper, but her freedom. As in prison.

And now here we are again. Different time, different stakes, but once more, a woman is in the chair. Laurene Jobs didn’t ask to be compared to Katharine Graham, but I can’t wait for permission. This week, The Atlantic is at the center of a complex, disturbing story—after its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was revealed to be part inadvertantly included in a WhatsApp group of DT ‘leaders’ (Mike Waltz, National Security Adviser; Vance, as in VP Vance; Pete Hegseth, Defense Secretary (used to be Fox Anchor; CIA Director, John Ratcliffe; Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence; Steve Witkoff, Special Envoy; Scott B, who appears to be our Secretary of the Treasury, but who knows; Susie Wiles, WH Chief of Staff; MAR, Marco Rubio; Alex Wong, who is Waltz' deputy; and former Green Beret, Joe Kent, who leads the National Counterterrorism Center. Others included in the Signal chat were identified as Brian, who referred to himself in the chat as "Brian McCormack for NSC;" Walker Barrett Jacob and "SM," who Goldberg reported he believed to be Trump adviser Stephen Miller. Big crowd so no one noticed that Jeffrey had been invited, likely by mistake. You know who is missing? DT, and it’s even mentioned that he is not in the know on this plan. And they are casually discussing Saudi bombings in Yemen.

What stood out to me wasn’t just the horror of the content. It was the tone. The way they spoke about mass death as if they were debating dinner reservations before a Broadway show. And I promise you it wasn’t Hamilton. The inhumanity of it was, for me, the most shocking part.

But The Atlantic didn’t bury it as I’m pretty sure the Washington Post might have. They didn’t spin it. They didn’t fall apart. They reported. They investigated. And they acknowledged. It’s an example in the difference between an institution and an influence campaign. The editorial leadership and the journalism coming out of The Atlantic over the past year—on politics, extremism, democracy, global affairs, and yes, moral reckoning—has been nothing short of extraordinary. They’ve shown what it means to report with clarity, depth, and courage in a time of digital noise and democratic fragility.

And, we all thank them for this time as well.

A little bit of history around The Atlantic’s trajectory. Founded in 1857—yes, you read that right—it has a long history of standing for anti-slavery, civic virtue, and ideas worth defending. It’s been an echo chamber for the best of America for centuries. It’s evolved in today’s politics into one of the most relevant, modern publications we have, in my opinion. Under the stewardship of Jobs and the current editorial team, its subscriber base has grown significantly, especially during the Trump years, as people searched desperately for media they could trust. While The Atlantic doesn’t publicly disclose monthly subscriber counts regularly, it crossed 1 million paying subscribers in 2023, and continues to trend upward—largely because people are craving depth again.

The NY Times, for reference, has approximately 10,000,000. Heather Cox Richardson? 2,000,000.

Here’s the link to sign up—and send it to someone who still thinks X is a source of truth.

Here’s the thing. Yes, these are excruciatingly difficult times, but we are not without agency.

How about we all sign up to subscribe to The Atlantic and make sure that our friends and family do the same? How about we start elevating news outlets like this that are actually handling things with respect, intelligence, facts, and courage? What if in one week it had a subscriber base that was larger than The NY Times? Lofty? Maybe but worth working toward.

Do you want to drive Trump crazy? This is the way to do it.

Namaste.

-- Christine Merser, Founder, Apricity Publishing