Jason Koebler, Samantha Cole, Emanuel Maiberg and Joseph Cox, founders of tech news site 404 Media, write about how they’re navigating the uncertain economy.
Koebler, Cole, Maiberg and Cox write, “For that reason, we wanted to give a small update on the state of 404 Media ahead of our second anniversary in August. The short version is that the state of 404 Media is strong. The support of our subscribers has allowed us to make 404 Media our full time jobs since the beginning. One of the reasons we started the company instead of trying to get new jobs at other media companies is because most have many of the problems that VICE did. We believed there was a better way to run a media company, and we are thankfully not in a position where we need to lay ourselves off. In fact, we are in a position where we can continue to focus on making 404 Media better.
“From the beginning, we have said that we want to build something that lasts a long time, and that part of our strategy would be to be very conservative with growing the company and to be conservative with how we spend our money, because it makes no sense to have a company that succeeds only when financial times are good but has to fire everyone at the slightest downturn. Our company is doing better than we ever expected it to, but we also have been in the business long enough to know that we cannot expect growth forever, that the advertising market fluctuates wildly, and that the ways people find and consume news are constantly changing. We know that this is a dangerous ‘macroenvironment’ for journalism, as they say, with news outlets being threatened with existentially costly litigation from the president, his regulators and his Department of Justice, state politicians, and rich and powerful people who do not want to face accountability for their actions.”
Read more here.
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