Wake me up when the mourning is over

I don’t usually jump into The Discourse.

But when H Kapp-Klote forwarded me Ryan Broderick’s recent Garbage Day and said I wanna read your take, I thought sure, I can take a break from covering revenue for one Saturday.

”Yeah, it’s probably time to panic”—in case you missed it—was Ryan’s wake up call to The Media.

BLEAK SHIT MAN.

Not untrue.

But also, I feel like I’m at a funeral that will not end. The coffin is hovering above the ground and everyone just keeps paying their respects or spitting on the grave or launching into another eulogy.

*Cue Monty Python: Bring out your dead! Here’s one! I'm not dead yet!

Let me back up and remind you that I’m not here to save legacy media. That’s someone else’s job. I’m here to help independent journalists get paid and build what’s next.

My main reaction to this piece wasn’t about Ryan’s warnings, which I think are valid, especially for those failing to adapt. What struck me is that we’re still defining The Media as a small set of legacy publishers and their big tech overlords.

We’re looking backwards when we should be looking ahead.

We’ve definitely lost some things, but if you need a reason to feel hopeful in this moment, allow me to remind you what The Media has gained.

The rise of the niche beat is upon us

If there’s an upside to the downsizing of legacy publishers, it’s this. You can now cover whatever the hell you want and people will pay you for it.

I love what Alissa Walker is doing with this freedom.

Alissa had pitched investigative stories about LA’s perilous relationship with the Olympics when she was working in big newsrooms but they were often shut down. Now, she has an entire publication about the impact the LA28 games, rapidly being shared by readers and experts around the world.

Hell Gate cofounder Esther Wang took her newfound editorial license and started a column called OnlyFins about fishing in New York City. You wouldn’t believe me if I said it could stand alone as its own publication, but IT COULD. The rave reviews do not lie.

More mics means more reporting

Are news influencers bad? They can be. But there’s also a lot of new voices on the scene who—whether or not you consider them journalists—are doing valuable reporting.

How about the major comeback of incarcerated writers that social media enabled?

Christopher Blackwell and Darrell K. Jackson can publish their work to their own feeds from inside prison. And the Prison Journalism Project, founded in 2020, has brought even more incarcerated reporters’ work online.

Homeless journalists are also getting way more airtime. One of my former neighbors who goes by Roofless publishes a newsletter about homeless policy through lived experience which she pounds out on her phone. Theo Henderson launched his popular podcast We The Unhoused when he was still living on the street.

Yes, there’s lots of trust and ethics problems that come along with this new direct-to-audience landscape, but are we so sure it was better before??? We weren’t hearing from these people at all.

No gods, no masters

Journalists are taking back the business.

Newsroom unions are much more widespread now and reporters are willing to walk off the job because what do they have to lose now? Their jobs are vanishing anyway. Might as well go down fighting!

Freelancer unions have come a long way since I started freelancing in 2007, winning policy changes like the Freelance Isn’t Free Act in New York and related protections in a few other cities and states that ensure independent journalists get paid.

And how about the worker-led newsrooms?!

As 404 Media’s Emanuel Maiberg said on their anniversary podcast:

“What if we started a company that prioritized journalism? Would that work? Here we are a year later, it does work. Congrats to us.”

It’s wild to watch legacy media report on major layoffs and then turn around to cover the publication launches of those same journalists.

THEIR LOSS. The report backs are looking very healthy from teams like Rascal, The 51st, RANGE, Aftermath, Hell Gate, Defector, Racket and The Appeal. Want more to follow? I keep a running list here.

The return of the “feel good” internet

Ok, so maybe we trusted big tech companies too much with our audience building and now we have to peddle back to our own domains, but we are rebuilding fast.

You don’t need social media as much as you think you do. Everyone’s pretty over it anyway and there’s plenty to be gained from good ol’ word of mouth, which, hilariously, is how Facebook grew so fast in the first place.

It’s been heartwarming to watch everyone help each other migrate off Substack to return to the quirky handmade websites that once made the internet fun. Molly White wrote an extensive guide on how to do it and lots of folks, even outside journalism, are offering their support.

Worth remembering that not all tech is big tech too. There’s rad independent software makers like my partner, Outpost Publishers Cooperative, which serves Ghost publishers with ethical growth and monetization tools. And there’s the Tiny News Collective which makes tech more accessible for micro newsrooms, on top of providing training and other types of business support. Join them!

Your salary is now uncapped

We are lifting the ceiling on journalism wages. You’re gonna push back on this one, I know it, but hear me out.

The median annual income for a reporter in the last decade was around $50k, according to the Pew Research Center and yes, I’m aware many of you made more than that on staff which is good, but even still, current salaries and freelance rates are too low for the cost of living right now.

Surely, we can do better than that and journalist entrepreneurs ARE.

You no longer have to negotiate your salary newsroom against newsroom. A whole new set of revenue streams has opened itself up to you. While maybe ad revenue is dead at legacy media scale, it’s alive and well for indie publishers. You can also negotiate those deals yourself and pick your price.

Of course, reader-funded support remains resilient and rising, for publishers who prioritize it. Big dollar donors, grants and fellowships can always be a back up plan and you can and should choose more than one option to ensure financial viability.

What this all comes down to is envisioning the future you want to be part of creating. It does not need to revolve around legacy media or big tech. They’ll get their act together or they won’t and we can build with or without them. No need to wait.

If six years on my own has taught me anything, it’s that you get to decide how you want to play the game and who you play it with.

You can continue to mourn the industry you once knew, and I will give you grace there because I have seen my fair share of industry downfalls in my career.

But wake me up when the mourning is over so we can get to work.