A group of Motherboard folks just spun up their own new independent outlet
404media.co
404media.co
https://www.404media.co/biden-administration-changes-mind-sa...
This article took me 20-30 minutes to write, edit, and publish. It's still news, but it's more of an update on something I've covered and written about literally hundreds of times before. So I am providing some of the context about the decision that I can recite from memory (I check the specifics, of course), telling people what's new, and providing them the document.
This article I published earlier today, meanwhile, is something I've been poking along on for weeks, talked to a lot of sources on, read a lot of academic papers on, etc.
https://www.404media.co/instagram-ads-illegal-content-drugs-...
At Motherboard our main way of operating was to always have a big investigation or narrative feature going on in the background, but to be on the lookout for news or timely things to do that align with our "beats" (the things we cover day-to-day, the topics we know inside and out). Usually features are something that you poke along on for weeks or months and go through a very rigorous back-and-forth editing process.
FOIA stuff can "take" months or years, but often very little of that is active work time. The way that works is you file a request, wait for the agency to respond, and bug them a bunch when they miss deadlines or don't respond. I've had FOIA requests returned the same day, and I've had others returned five years after I file them.
Good question!
On LibreWolf, the scrolling is really messed up on this page, and on the home page. Out of curiosity, are you Rolling Your Own Scrolling(TM)? That's generally a no-no.
>Much has been written about the failing business model of new media. We have watched how new media companies fail, and it’s not because of a lack of audience, revenue, impact, or vital work. New media companies fail because of a growth-at-any-cost mentality, and venture capital investments made at absurd valuations. Most importantly, astronomical overhead costs make it impossible for journalists to out-earn the cost of expensive office space, the ever-changing whims of management, executives’ salaries, the cost of unnecessary enterprise software, and an endless parade of consultants brought in to figure out what’s wrong.
>It doesn’t have to be this way, and at 404 Media, it will not. We propose a simple alternative: pay journalists to do journalism.
Also, y u no Mastodon?
There are a lot of things we wanted to launch with that we haven't had time to do yet, which doesn't mean it's not a priority. As you can imagine we've had a few (very minor) urgent fires in the leadup to launch, so tbh our social media accounts across the board have taken a temporary backseat. Mastodon is high on our list and I'm sure we'll be there by the end of the week if not the end of the day.
Thank you for your support!
Why would you name your website after a website error code? Appreciate the easter egg on the actual 404 page.
Not really direct feedback but when the Verge launched they made a big splash with in-depth, long form stories like "Pre to postmortem: the inside story of the death of Palm and webOS" from 2012. I hope you guys could dig up some stories like this, and your commitment to filing FOIA requests seems promising.
1) Like how it sounds
2) People get it right away, even folks I know who don't care a lot about tech journalism or aren't super internet savvy (maybe they are even more likely to find themselves on 404 pages!)
3) This is a little pretentious and not the actual reason we chose it (i.e. we realized it later), but we really do want to tell stories from "hidden" parts of the internet / tech and the undercovered parts of it. 404 pages are full of easter eggs, and maybe it's just something about accidentally stumbling onto a community or wold you didn't previously know existed.
That surprises me, but I suspect you are more likely to know the answer to that than I am, so it also makes me a bit sad.
I have a small suggestion: Would you consider adding a perk for premium subscribers to be able to suggest (not demand) story pitches/ideas, and maybe vote for them to indicate which ideas have more interest? It's kind of an extension of what you're planning to do with the FOIA requests forum, and similar to how some FOSS projects try to prioritize features that are requested or bountied by supporting donors. Also, it could be a nice way to crowdsource ideas from your pre-vetted audience, so you don't drown in spam and vote manipulation.
Edit: Oh there's also plenty of references in the HTML, as well as it literally saying "Published with Ghost" in the footer which I just noticed haha
https://404-media.ghost.io/ redirects to the main 404media site, as well.
I think one of the main problems with modern journalism is that it has ventured too far into activism. Journalism is there to report on politics, not become a political actor.
I think a mistake that has been made is paywalls - if you don't get your story out there, somebody else will with their agenda on top. Make your content as shareable as possible and 1:X consumers you can convert into a customer. Once you have more users in the comments section, you could prioritize paid users.
You have a techy edge anyway, assume everybody runs ad blockers and can use archive links. Believe it or not, hosting images of ads bypasses ad blockers, protects privacy and cuts out the likes of Google (see top of EEVBlog [1]). Once you have a niche audience you can advertise a niche product quite effectively.
Good luck!
Design is clean, loads fast, and articles are stacked, so I wish them luck. It's pretty ruthless out there, but a few good stories on HN front-page[2] should at least get this syndicated in all the best places.
[0]: https://ghost.org/ (they've also forgotten to change the default article:publisher URL which leads to Ghost's FB page)
[1]: https://outpost.pub/
Hope they pull it off.
Supporting 404 feels better than sending money to some corp where it gets pocketed by the c suite.
People seem to make the comparison only because the things are accessed by using a screen, which seems to be a very simple perspective. Just because Netflix is a great bargain (for those who like their content), doesn't mean you can conclude that everything else is expensive.
Both entertainment and reading in-depth paid news are one and the same: luxuries one does in their (typically) scarce spare time using an (often) modest budget.
If we use Netflix as a benchmark, you shouldn't spend money on anything except for on Netflix, since almost nothing gives the same amount of hours of use per cent paid. Exceptions for lightbulbs, which are not that entertaining to watch.
I think most people sometimes go out for a drink, a meal, or a coffee - without agonizing much about the price, even though you could get many days glued to Netflix for the same price as that drink with friends.
Ad-free Netflix is more expensive.
No comment on whether either is reasonable but responding to “it costs too much” with a more expensive option is an interesting choice.
Also, paying monthly is only more expensive if the person paying decides to stay that long. Monthly payments allow flexibility to cancel rather than committing to a year.
- How much is the pizza?
- It's 10 dollars.
- I don't think it's worth 10 dollars!
- Uhm, okay then don't buy it.
- But I really need that pizza, it's really important that I get it!
- Then pay 10 dollars?
- That's too expensive, it's worth nowhere near that!
- If it's not worth 10 dollars why is it important to you?
- It's extremely important that I get that pizza and I really want it, but also you have to understand that it's not worth 10 dollars, so give it to me for free now!
...ad infinitum.
If it still doesn't make sense, then it will never make sense.
(cue cheesy music): "For just a quarter a day, you can save a struggling journalist from corporate overlords, submarine PR pieces, and human interest stories"
I don't know what the answer / formula is, but I pay more than that per year for my LWN.net subscription and for a few other publications. Less than that for others, but I really don't know what the "right" level would be to maximize revenue so they're able to pay themselves a decent salary and keep the lights on.
They are truly great at what they do, and I’m excited to see what comes of it now that they have their own plot on the open internet.
Excited to see where this goes.
Agreed.
> Hopefully now that they are free of billionaire benefactors, they will not need to weave in partisan attacks and other mandatory messages.
These types that are deceitful, immoral and tear society apart with their paymaster propaganda don’t deserve another position of trust.
You are fortunate if you have never needed to do anything against your principles because your job required it. I have worked for companies I am not proud of. I am giving them the benefit of the doubt and a chance to use their new found independence for good. If they fuck it up, I won't renew membership.
So as a question, is Joseph to the left of Samantha in that image? This image is perfect for training data for VAR offside decisions.
I haven't been totally happy with my tech newsfeed the past while but I'm clutching onto my Defector subscription for all that it's worth. I hope they can make this work similarly.
As a journalist, your job is to inform and question. They don't seem to be questioning.
In their apple article on apple support RTR, they write, "This is a landmark shift in policy from Apple." [1]
It's not. They have played this game before; creating RTR "friendly" programs and then forcing signing of strict NDAs, and requirements that leave repair shops worse then they would without the program. [2-5]
Also, "It means, effectively, that consumers have won". Wow, I have never heard that before, only for it to fail or be false. Remind you of the New York bill which was kneecapped at "last minute by Gov. Kathy Hochul"? [6]
1: https://www.404media.co/apple-endorses-california-right-to-r...
2: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/18/we-are-lo...
3: https://www.howtogeek.com/894168/apples-self-repair-program-...
4: https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjdjnv/apples-independent-re... (ironically from vice, lol)
5: https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/28/apple_selfservice_sla...
6: https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7gdwb/new-yorks-right-to-re...
Coincidentally my company was called 'Bad Gateway', and there's a company near me called 200 OK so welcome to the club =)
Tech nitpick: I was a bit annoyed though that the green buttons to subscribe are then replaced by green buttons to "gift to a friend" or subscribe to newsletter. It's easy to add to uBlock, but it would be nice to not have annoyances that distract from reading. I really like the long form of articles.
In a sense ProPublica won. Its mission is to do real investigative journalism and get as many people to hear about it as possible. They are winning when people take their X and repackage it into dumbed down Y. They coexist with the low effort Substack ecosystem.
Even if zero people pay for 404 Media, who is going to be like, "oh man, these guys cracked open the Right to Repair story, I should hire them." That sounds like teeing yourself for content marketing at iFixit at worse, Microsoft at best. Why?
We are under no illusion that this will be easy but we are excited to give it a shot. The worst thing that can happen is that we tried our best on something we really believe in and enjoy doing, it doesn't work financially, and we ultimately have to go do something else. We are hopeful and optimistic that we CAN make it work, but already we are overwhelmed and thrilled with the response. It's only our second day but we're committed to becoming a vital publication for people who care about how tech impacts humans, and how humans impact tech. We understand we will need to prove this day in and day out for people to feel like they are getting their money's worth, or that their money is supporting a force for good in the world/the internet. But we really want to make that happen. Thanks for the kind words
PS Does The Information still exist?