Six months in, journalist-owned tech publication 404 Media is profitable

of note:

The 404 team DIYs as much as possible. They pay for hosting through Ghost and set up litigation insurance, for example, but everyone makes their own art for stories instead of paying for agency photos. (The reporters are also the merch models). Everyone works from home, so they don’t have an office and don’t plan on getting one anytime soon. The team communicates through a free Slack channel. Koebler mails out merchandise from his garage in Los Angeles. Every month, the team meets (virtually) to decide how much they can pay themselves. (The number changes each month, but everyone gets paid the same amount.)

SilverShark,

The team of 404 had to hide their content so it isn’t easily used by content mills. The AI content mills are starting to become a very big thing. There is a podcast called Gadget Lab by WIRED, and last episode was about an interview made to a guy that owns several of these content mills. The guy claims he understands that what he is doing is bad, since he is churning out this kind of content that is likely to be full of mistakes and false information, and also claims that a team of people review the content before actually publishing it.

This is also being done via domain squatting, in which people buy old domains of blogs that were known, and start a new blog full of AI generated content in it.

sculd,

Happy for them. Good journalism should be rewarded.

sadreality,

Some of their stories on privacy. Solid topic for pleb focused journalism IMHO.

There is deff space for covering on things that matter to w2 slaves.

millie,

This almost makes me want to give them my email address, or at least a throwaway, but I really don’t want to encourage that behavior.

If a couple of decades and some change on the internet has taught me anything, it’s that toxic, abuseable change is insidious. Subscription models for games seemed pretty harmless when it was just a handful of MMOs. Consolidating more user-directed social interactions into an algorithmic feed seemed like a pretty good idea in 2009.

But now, in 2024, when a company tries to get me to play along with something I try to think of what the wider implications would be of other companies adopting the same model. How many websites would start asking for email addresses? How long until they start doing shady things with them?

I know that I can send something off to a junk address that will expire or that I’ll just never check, but for most users it’s just a massive spam vector for what is likely to be their only email address. It’s not really something I’d like to encourage.

Goofy name aside, they sound like a pretty alright company other than that. Love the idea of a journalist-owned outlet, but I’d be even more into the idea of a journalist-owned outlet that’s more concerned with setting an example for the future health of the internet than with self-protectionism.

Ilandar,

For what it’s worth they are aware that some of their readers do not like the email subscription model. They acknowledge it isn’t a perfect solution but they also don’t have many alternatives currently as a small, independent media company trying to survive and grow.

RickRussell_CA,

Remember when Substack, the home of many excellent journalists, started to defend fascist and white supremacist content on their platform?

Oh, wait, that’s happening right now.

luciole,
@luciole@beehaw.org avatar

I know you’re not alone with the opinion that a website asking an email address to create an account is dangerous, but frankly I still don’t understand the slippery slope argument attached to it. There are laws governing email marketing nowadays (CAN-SPAM in the US), as any actual business fucking around will find out.

In my humble opinion, an important lesson we can take from the last decades of the web is to be wary of a private free lunch. The Google search engine has never required an email and yet today they sit on an empire based on the exploitation of our data. In that sense, paying for a service is much more honest than mining the users’ privacy and selling it to advertisers (as mentioned in some hermetic Terms of Agreements & Conditions). The system may not be perfect, but asking an email address is the least invasive way to recognize someone that paid for a service.

Also, what do you mean by “self-protectionism”? It sounds like a derogatory euphemism for “making a living”. It’s fine for four journalists to live from their profession. I think paying human sized businesses for services is quite different than doing the same with disruptive, market devouring corporations.

fubarx,

England’s Private Eye magazine has been going for decades. They sell subscriptions to the paper magazine, put on events, and sell a small amount of print advertising. They’ve completely gone against going digital and by all accounts are profitable.

The future of journalism may well be going back to the origin of small publications.

Fudoshin,
@Fudoshin@feddit.uk avatar

Private Eye is so fucking depressing. They say they put the funny stuff in the second half to offset the corruption and scandals in the first half but I can rarely get through one page before I have to put it down.

Appoxo,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I believe Ars Technica also has no office. All of their web presence is on AWS as well.

Norgur,

While I love that they are profitable, this sounds like a massive private investment from all involved which is not a good model as a whole

bobs_monkey,

To me it sounds like a journalism co-op, how is this not a good model? Everyone contributes to getting it going, and then everyone gets an even slice of the pie. They keep their overhead minimal to keep costs down, and everyone has incentive to put out their best work. Sounds solid to me.

Norgur,

Well, the line between a minimal overhead, self employed lifestyle and an abusive workplace are fuzzy in those kinds of arrangements

Coasting0942,

How does it compare to a regular journalist workplace? I’m not a journalist.

disablist,

They each put a quarter share of $1,000, per the article:

The four cofounders each own 25% of the company, and at launch each put in $1,000 to cover initial costs.

Norgur,

I mean investment less in dollaridoos and more in time and energy.

BravoVictor,
@BravoVictor@programming.dev avatar

Isn’t that what most small business owners go through? My brother and his wife own a business and they hustle waaaay more than I need to as an employee of a large business with all the HR, retirement etc baked in. I don’t think they went net positive for like 4-5 years.

GreyEyedGhost,

Yeah, this sounds like most small businesses. You could do well, or not. That’s the risk you take. It isn’t for everyone, which is why a lot of people work for other people for a regular wage. They trade the chance of doing really well for (more) stability, and forgo the risk of losing their investment and having to look for a new job.

FarceOfWill,

The thing is it’s profitable because they pay themselves less than they make in income. We don’t really know how sustainable their pay is

festus,

Yeah they make the same point in their subscribers-only podcast. They did say that they earn enough to be sustainable, so it sounds like they aren’t having to dip into their savings anymore. I hope they get more than that though as everyone deserves to thrive.

wise_pancake,

I love to see this, it’s nice seeing independent media do well!

symfonystation,
@symfonystation@kbin.social avatar

@wise_pancake

@alyaza I helped them out with a paid subscription. Hopefully more people will.

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