EDITING FROM THE GUT: How Natalie McCarty & Stella Speridon-Violet are remaking editorial power through community, candor & cultural instinct 

Words by Marie Anne Arreola  |  March 2026

There is a particular kind of quiet authority that does not announce itself with mastheads or institutional sheen. It moves through group chats, half-finished voice notes, barroom confessions, and the late-night editing sessions where the screen blurs and the stakes sharpen. Gut Instinct Media operates on that frequency—less a publication in the traditional sense than a responsive, living system tuned to how people actually talk, think, and live.

On a brisk Sunday in late November 2024, just after the outlet's first anniversary, that ethos became visible offline. In a rented loft in downtown Los Angeles, founders Natalie McCarty and Stella Speridon-Violet hosted Gut Instinct's first community celebration. Writers, readers, and local creatives packed the room, proof of a milestone that barely existed two years earlier. What began in late 2023 as a conversational idea between two young writers had become a fully functioning digital media network with nearly 20 contributors, a growing social presence, and the beginnings of a public events arm.

The timing matters. As legacy newsrooms continue to shrink and algorithm-driven platforms reward speed over substance, Gut Instinct is staking a quieter claim: that relevance is not measured in clicks alone, but in resonance, trust, and sustained community engagement.

From Conversation to Collective

Gut Instinct's origins were modest by design. McCarty, a Los Angeles–based publicist and communications strategist, says the idea emerged from noticing what was missing in mainstream media coverage: space for conversations that felt grounded, unfinished, and real. "Media is inseparable from the social conditions in which it exists," she says, describing her impulse to build a platform rooted in lived experience rather than editorial distance.

Her editorial approach sits at the intersection of culture, activism, and personal narrative. Shaped by years spent between New York and Los Angeles, McCarty views storytelling not simply as content production but as civic participation—a way of tracing how systems of power, identity, grief, and intimacy move through everyday life. Editing, in this framework, is not about polish for polish's sake, but about protecting the emotional and political integrity of a story.

That vision sharpened with the arrival of Stella Speridon-Violet, a Phoenix-based journalist and graduate of Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism. As co-founder and head writer, Speridon-Violet brought newsroom discipline, reporting rigor, and a deep commitment to editorial responsibility. Her role has been central to shaping Gut Instinct's voice, balancing intimacy with structure, and instinct with accountability.

Together, McCarty and Speridon-Violet assembled a geographically dispersed editorial team—writers and designers based in Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, Omaha, and Toronto, each contributing distinct cultural vantage points. The collective now spans coverage of culture, politics, music, fashion, and personal narrative, unified less by beat than by sensibility. The editorial bar is deceptively simple. "If a story feels alive, honest, and rooted in the world our communities are actually living in, it belongs here," McCarty says. The distinction is subtle but consequential. Where many outlets chase virality first and depth second, Gut Instinct privileges texture over trend and resonance over reach. The guiding question is instinctual but rigorous: Does this expand our understanding of right now?

Trust, Labor, and the Ethics of Care

From its earliest days, Gut Instinct did more than publish articles, it curated conversations. Essays about grief, friendship, politics, music festivals, fashion, and creative burnout blurred the line between personal narrative and cultural analysis. The tone was intimate, sometimes confessional, often reflective. That openness carried risk. What might have been dismissed as oversharing instead became a trust-building mechanism. "That's what built trust," McCarty says. "It made me real to the community." In an attention economy where authenticity is routinely commodified, Gut Instinct's sincerity reads as almost defiant. Its editorial strategy favors deceleration: publish with intention, invite dialogue, and treat readers "like the thoughtful people they already are."

The result is an audience that participates rather than passively consumes. Readers respond, writers return, conversations continue beyond the page. Trust turns readership into relationship, and the publication into a space of invitation rather than extraction.

But intimacy does not absolve responsibility. Running an independent publication in 2026, McCarty is quick to note, "is not an exercise in pure idealism." Gut Instinct is self-funded. McCarty works a full-time job outside the platform to sustain it, juggling contributors, deadlines, and strategy late into the night. "Deadlines stack against bills," she says, without romanticism. Burnout is not theoretical; it is operational. This tension, between vision and viability, is one of the platform's least visible realities. For McCarty and Speridon-Violet, sustainability is not defined solely by revenue streams or follower counts. "For me, sustainability isn't just about money," McCarty explains. "It's about protecting the people, the stories, and the energy that make this whole thing possible."

That reframing challenges a dominant media logic that treats burnout as collateral damage and communities as growth funnels. At Gut Instinct, care functions as infrastructure. It also shapes the outlet's ethical stance. In a media environment where misinformation spreads quickly and amplification carries real-world consequences, editorial freedom is inseparable from editorial responsibility. "Free speech matters deeply to me," McCarty says, "but so does the responsibility that comes with amplifying someone's story."

Context matters. Impact matters. Care is not a branding exercise—it is editorial praxis.

Power, Memory, and What Comes Next

Gut Instinct Media is built by and for those often sidelined by traditional media hierarchies. McCarty and Speridon-Violet lead laterally rather than vertically, prioritizing collaboration over competition and discernment over dominance. Writers are treated as collaborators, not content pipelines, many describing the platform not as a stepping stone, but as a creative home. That philosophy extends beyond the digital page. In 2024, Gut Instinct hosted its Weekender in Phoenix, an in-person gathering that paired sustainability, local art, and community exchange. The event signaled a broader ambition: to build media life both online and offline, where journalism becomes social ecology rather than broadcast.

The stakes of that work are sharpened by the present moment. Media contraction, platform volatility, and political polarization have created a hunger, particularly among younger audiences, for reporting that is nuanced, culturally literate, and accountable. Gut Instinct does not attempt to replicate legacy institutions. It reimagines editorial power as something distributed, relational, and grounded in trust.

McCarty is unapologetic about the political dimensions of that work. She speaks openly about immigrant rights, racial violence, and the necessity of naming injustice plainly. "Editorial neutrality, in moments of injustice, is a form of complicity," she says. Journalism, in this framing, is not a commodity but collective memory, a record shaped in real time, across borders and languages, on one's own terms.

In the end, Gut Instinct is less about instinct as impulse than instinct as discipline: a practiced attentiveness to what matters now and what will echo later. Under Natalie McCarty and Stella Speridon-Violet's leadership, editing becomes an ethical act, storytelling a form of care, and media a site of lived accountability. The work does not shout for attention. It listens and refuses to let the moment slip quietly into the feed.