Although Paperless Post co-founder Alexa Hirschfeld was named one of Fast Company’s “Most Influential Women in Tech,” she has “never taken that stuff seriously.” In the latest installment of Mediabistro’s Hey, How’d You Do That? series, the entrepreneur tells how the site got Condoleeza Rice as an early adopter and gives tips on launching a successful startup.

“She came through another gatekeeper, which is pretty much how all of our users come to us,” Hirschfeld said. “The invites went through our closed circle of Harvard friends initially, because we were both really paranoid. We had competitors then, and we were trying to smooth out the process of the workflow. We handed out user names and passwords very carefully back then, and Rice was maybe two or three degrees separated from someone we knew at the school.”

Read more in Hey, How’d You Build Paperless Post Into a Powerhouse, Alexa Hirschfeld? [subscription required]

Are you tech-startup-savvy? Well, if you can also crank out breaking news about the biz quickly, VentureBeat might like to assign you stories. And, lucky for you, many freelancers become regular contributors after showing their skills.

“We don’t want to keep people in freelancer limbo for too long,” said national editor Devindra Hardawar. “We like to take care of our writers.”

The site currently syndicates content to Reuters, The Christian Science Monitor and Business Insider, among others. It also gives some pretty generous traffic bonuses. So, if you’re interested in seeing your byline land on the site, check out some more tips from Mediabistro’s How To Pitch: VentureBeat. [AvantGuild subscription required]

A yet-to-be-launched tool called Meograph promises to let you easily “create, playback and share beautiful stories in the context of when and where.” It’s a tool that’s still in pre-beta, but journalists and news organizations can get priority access for an invite.

Meograph released a demo of what the tool can do, using the fictional KVWM San Diego TV station as an example use case. Based on the examples, I wouldn’t yet call the resulting product “beautiful,” but the storytelling format is a compelling mishmash: timeline + audio + Google Maps + images + video+  hyperlinks (for adding more context and linking to stories).

Misha Leybovich, founder and CEO, told me this via email about Meograph:

Meograph helps automatically create, share, and watch interactive multimedia stories.  Our first product pairs Google Earth with a timeline and multimedia overlays to tell stories in context of where and when.

Authoring is structured into a few simple prompts on an intuitive interface.  Viewers get a new form of media that they can watch in 2 min or dig into for an hour.  Sharing is easy: the two most viral types of media are videos and infographics … Meograph is both.

I’m not quite convinced that there are many use cases where this exact mishmash of media is the most powerful way to tell a story, but if you have any ideas, let me know in the comments. If you’re interested in testing the tool for a news organization, email journalism@memograph.com.

If you’ve been following start-up culture and are looking to break into business magazines, you might find a home in Inc.

While Inc. occupies the same shelf space of other business publications like Entrepreneur, Fast Company and Forbes, the magazine has a distinction that separates itself from its competitors.

“We are a magazine about people who are incredibly passionate and have the will to start a business from scratch,” said Alexandra Brez, Inc.‘s managing editor. ”We are different because of our sophistication, as well as our connection to and interest in community events. And we are a very likable brand. People are proud to be featured by us.”

For full pitching guidelines and info on the best sections to shoot for, read How To Pitch: Inc.

This article is one of several mediabistro.com features exclusively available to AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, you can register for as little as $55 a year and get access to these articles, discounts on seminars and workshops, and more.

With the increase of bite-size portions of information, it’s no surprise that startups are trying to figure out the best model for long-form journalism on the web. Like the Kickstarter project Matter, U.K. startup PostDesk is looking to provide quality long-form content and discussion online. Unlike Matter, which charges readers 99 cents per article, articles on PostDesk are free thanks to launch partners and sponsors for different sections.

PostDesk bills itself as a place for “independent long form content such as in-depth news, reviews, investigative journalism, analysis, critique and controversial opinion pieces.” The site is community oriented and seeks to provide an online space not only for reading but for conversation on the issues it covers: tech, gaming, business, culture and politics. Content is produced in-house, but also includes submitted content through links. According to BetaKit, it will pay its contributors through a revenue-sharing model. Read more