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Comment by chaps | Hacker News Reader

Yeah. I'm a freelance journalist and this is one of the worst journalism takes I've seen in a while. Paying bills is already hard enough as it is and I, like many others in this industry, don't even have health insurance: why in the fuck would any of us invest in a startup?

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One of the companies I worked for was an ESOP [0]. Has there ever been anything like that in terms of journalistic publications?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_Stock_Ownership_Plan

Hopefully not since the shares tend to go to $0.

Though I’d note The Economist has staff and former staff as minority shareholders.

The place I was at paid a lot more than $0 per share. Is zero share value common for ESOPs?

What I mean is that a lot of traditional journalistic outfits have been teetering toward bankruptcy in recent years/decades.

While there are successes, the total size of the industry has been declining.

this was a direct consequence of Google and Facebook's predatory pricing. How is a hack on the bread line supposed to take on the Goliaths of Silicon Valley?

Are we talking ad pricing? Or some other pricing? How is it predatory?

I run a B2B media company called Payload and all our employees own equity in the company.

http://payloadspace.com/

Because if you don't invest in something then you will never be rich.

If you do then there is a chance you might become rich.

All things considered, excluding pump’n’dump schemes, you’d probably have a better shot winning the lottery than backing the Next Big ThingTM.

Yeah, I mean you aren't wrong. But I think that's people's mindset and some feel they need to at least try if they can.

To ensure the stability of the platform you are (seemingly) sacrificing being well-paid to stay on.

Why is the base assumption here that journalists be the ones to pay for this?

Stakeholder theory?

You (we?) are some of the minority of humans that value journalism. Unfortunately.

Said another way: you're already paying for it - at least subsidizing it - by being underpaid.

Wouldn't you like to be in control of it for your troubles?

...you're greatly missing the point that none of us have any money to invest.

That, I understand better than most here.

What did it really cost to start The Intercept, though? Salaries aside - or not.

What can be done with new tech that makes publishing cheaper than ever?

The Intercept was bankrolled by a billionaire who committed $250 million to his journalism efforts while it got off the ground...

https://pressthink.org/2013/10/why-pierre-omidyar-decided-to...

Is that what it really costs to forge a new, worthwhile publication?

Who knows -- but that's what it really cost to forge the new, worthwhile publication you used as an example..

> What can be done with new tech that makes publishing cheaper than ever?

Nothing. IMO that’s all been done: replacing the printing presses with the internet made it incredibly cheap to publish journalism. Producing journalism, however, remains a solidly human task that resists automation. And every time anyone tries the result is notably inferior.

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