Rafat Ali has done something remarkable in an era where it's really tough to make money telling people the truth. He built and sold PaidContent, a site that covered the digital media revolution with trenchant foresight. And now he's built Skift, an information company focused on the travel and dining industries. 

I sat down with Rafat Ali at the Nasdaq Marketsite in Times Square to get an insider's look at how you revolutionize a crumbling industry. Rafat's a guy whose career I've sort of passively followed as a journalist for a long time. When I was writing for a newspaper in Silicon Valley 18 years ago, I saw him toughing it out on the opposite coast. As he's jumped into entrepreneurial ventures, I leaped from newspapers, to magazines, to broadcast, while crafting my own digital projects. Like Fortt Knox. 

Anyway, part of the brilliance of Rafat Ali is his ability to draw lessons from one industry that are prophetic in another. So even if you're not into media or travel, there's something in here for you.