"Owning our own work, and being beholden to no one but our readers and colleagues — as opposed to say, investors, venture capitalists, or out-of-touch executives — feels like the future."

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.)

  • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
    43·
    9 months ago

    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@kbin.social
      9·
      9 months ago

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

      • BolexForSoup@kbin.social
        5·
        9 months ago

        Scaling can bring those issues to a serious head too. Can often kill a group/company pretty quickly. Saw it in the film/video production world constantly. Partners and small production companies just collapsing like a dying star every 8-12mo where I am. Almost always fighting about money, rates, types of jobs, roles, etc. because the loose arrangement worked when it was a handful tight knit people making modest money. Collapsed when real dollars showed up and they wouldn’t stop hiring people for cheap like they were all still scraping by in the beginning.