Randy Cassingham created This is True in 1994, but he had to invent commercial e-mail publishing to do it.

Educated as a journalist, Randy was not interested in a career as a reporter: he wanted to skip directly to syndicated columnist. But syndicates weren't interested in untested talent, 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."

Randy was quite familiar with the online world even then -- he's been online since "prehistoric times," as he puts it: 1983. Even before that, he was familiar with modems to dial in to central computers: he used was a 110-baud acoustic coupler -- hooked up to a Model 33 Teletype being used as a terminal to an Hewlett-Packard 2000C timeshare machine -- starting in 1971. "I still get aroused when I see old tapes of Walter Cronkite with that 'clackity-clack' sound running in the background (even though it wasn't real even then)," he has told colleagues.

Then a radical transformation occurred online: the Internet, then called ARPAnet, went live in 1969 after the base technologies were invented in the early- and mid-1960s. But it wasn't until the invention of the World Wide Web in late 1990 that ordinary people could begin to use the Internet. As the WWW swept through nerdy places like JPL, and later started leaking into the general public, Randy realized that content would be the driving force of early Internet growth.

In 1994 there was precious little content available online. Long the bastion of nerds and academics, even the thought of online commercial activity 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 realized online: he could use the Internet to bypass the gatekeepers of newspaper editors and large syndication agencies and speak directly to his audience.

The result of his idea, This is True (first published under a different title, "This Just In"), started in June 1994, and once it was announced there have been new direct readers -- e-mail subscribers -- every day without fail. True now reaches a six-figure subscriber base in over 200 countries.

Randy Cassingham in a late 1990s publicity shot.

The traditional media was wowed: in the mid-1990s Randy and True were featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Washington Post, Internet World, Boardwatch, Denver Post, USA Today, Wired, Playboy -- even CNN. Overseas, Randy and True were featured in Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Japan's "Nikkei"), MediaTelevision (Toronto), the London Daily Telegraph, Monde (France), Informazione (Italy), the London Guardian, and even PC Magazine in Turkey.

Journalists loved This is True not just because of its smart, irreverant content, but because it finally gave them an example to the biggest question about the Internet in the 1990s: What can you do there? They held up This is True as a good example, calling it "The kind of news items that keep comedians and commentators in business", "Best in Net Entertainment", "Funny stuff". In 1998, Randy quit his NASA day job to work full time online -- one of the first in the world to do so. And unlike the hordes that soon followed with unlikely business models -- which resulted in the "dotcom crash" of 2001 -- Randy (and This is True) are still going strong.

By that time syndication agencies started to show interest: Randy was no longer an "untested talent", but rather had a huge and loyal following. Yet Randy turned down two different syndication offers, preferring to stay with his online readership -- the people who made him successful to begin with. "The Internet," he said then, "represents the future of media. Newspapers are the dinosaur, doomed to extinction." The only thing that could keep newspapers alive, he said, was for them to embrace the new media, putting their stories online. Few did so at first, but by the late 1990s the rest of the industry clearly saw things the way Randy did, with thousands of newspapers creating web sites.

Randy is certainly not anti-newspaper, however: newspapers in four countries have run True in their pages, making Randy self-syndicated. He turned down the syndicates because they wanted control; Randy's model leaves him in control. For instance, when he decided to put searchable archives on True's web site, he didn't have to ask for permission, he was simply able to do it.

After leaving JPL, Randy moved to Colorado. After several years living just outside Boulder, he decided he wanted a simpler, quieter life -- after all, working online he could live anywhere that had good Internet access, so why live in a crowded, traffic-laden city? So he and his wife moved to rural Western Colorado, where they live in a county of only 4,000 people and one traffic light. In addition to This is True, Randy works on the True Stella Awards (which presents entertaining -- and thought-provoking -- write-ups of outrageous-but-true lawsuits, and what they say about society), Jumbo Joke (an ever-expanding selection of well-edited jokes), and Cranky Customer (a blog of customer service nightmares). He also created the million-selling Get Out of Hell Free card (his response to a reader condemning him to hell). And as the inventor of commercial e-mail publishing, Randy was one of the pioneers in understanding something else: just how terrible a problem "spam" would become. As an online user, you will certainly benefit from his Spam Primer.

So, What Is True?

This is True retells strange-but-true stories from "legitimate, mainstream" newspapers from around the world, each capped with a humorous, ironic, or opinionate comment (and, with luck, some combination of the three). On their own, the stories are pretty entertaining. But when you read the stories over time, certain themes start to emerge, and suddenly you realize there's a bigger picture. A really big picture: a new understanding of humanity begins to emerge. Yes, True is entertaining, but it's also truly thought-provoking. Both the fragility and the power of the individual becomes clearer. And you'll realize that some stories only look amusing -- and you'll realize you're actually angry! But it's anger with a purpose: you'll see you have the power to stand up and demand change. It's why so many subscribers say they'll subscribe for life.

More specifically, This is True consists of 7-9 odd stories, each with its own "slug" (title) and "tagline" (commentary). There are two versions: a "Premium" (paid) edition with all of the stories, and a free edition with four stories. But it doesn't stop there: each issue -- whether Premium or free -- also includes a Headline of the Week; an "Author's Notes" section that discusses one of the issues raised in more detail, notes updates or corrections, or runs letters from readers; a "Web Site of the Week" feature; the extremely popular "Honorary Unsubscribe", a brief obituary of someone interesting, who perhaps even had a huge impact on your life -- yet you may never have heard of them; and various other features. Even the free newsletter has a huge amount of entertaining and thought-provoking material. You can check out the most recent issue here. If you've read this whole page, you're obviously the sort of person who likes to know things, and to think. If you're not already a subscriber, check it out by starting with the free edition. Subscribing means you only get the issues as they come out -- we never send out ads-only e-mail. If you don't like it, you can get off the distribution with a click -- no questions asked. Please join us today using the form on this page.