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Six months in, journalist-owned tech publication 404 Media is profitable (www.niemanlab.org)

submitted 9 months ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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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.)

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[–] Norgur@kbin.social 13 points 9 months ago (10 children)

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

[–] disablist@lemdro.id 15 points 9 months ago (5 children)

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.

[–] FarceOfWill@infosec.pub 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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@lemmy.ca 5 points 9 months ago

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.

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