journalist-owned news sites (Sunday Internet optimism, part 2)

Previously: Sunday Internet optimism

Congratulations to 404 Media, which celebrated its successful first year on August 22. They link to other next-generation news sites, owned by the people who write for them. I checked for ads.txt files and advertiser pages to see which are participating in the conventional RTB ad system and which are doing something else. (404 Media does have an ads.txt file managed by BuySellAds.)

Defector: sports site that’s famous for not sticking to sports (and even has an Arts And Culture section and #AI coverage: Whatever AI Looks Like, It’s Not) (ads.txt not found, advertise with us link redirects to a page of contact info.)

Hell Gate: New York City news (not just for those who finally canceled their subscriptions to that other New York site) (ads.txt not found, advertise with Hell Gate is just a page with a contact email address.)

Racket - Your writer-owned, reader-funded source for news, arts, and culture in the Twin Cities such as What It’s Like to Eat Your Own 90-lb. Butter Head (ads.txt not found, but the Advertise with Racket link goes to a nice page including advertiser logos and testimonials.)

Remap: Video game site that also covers a variety of topics, including but not limited to games, rooting for sports teams that break your heart, inflatable hot tubs, hanging out on car auction websites, and more. Old News from the Latest Disasters: [T]he fact that these studio tell-all features have started to feel so same-y says less about the journalist reporting them and more about how mundane this kind of dysfunction is in AAA game development. (ads.txt not found, no ad contact or page)

Aftermath: a worker-owned, subscription-based website covering video games, the internet and everything that comes after. Short-Sighted AI Deals Aren’t The Future Of Journalism (ads.txt not found, no ad contact or page.)

Another good example, not on 404 Media’s list, is The Kyiv Independent — News from Ukraine, Eastern Europe. The Kyiv Independent was born out of a fight for freedom of speech. It was co-founded by a group of journalists who were fired from the Kyiv Post, then a prominent newspaper, as the owner attempted to take the newsroom under control and end its critical coverage of Ukrainian authorities. Instead of giving up, the fired team founded a new media outlet to carry on the torch — and be a truly independent voice of Ukraine. Opinion: AI complacency is compromising Western defense (ads.txt found, looks like they use an ad management service.)

What all these sites have in common is a focus on subscriber/member revenue and first-party data.

• Remap: Subscriptions, Journalism, and You

• 404 Media: We Need Your Email Address

• (update 20 Oct 2025) How the Kyiv Independent reached 20,000 paying members — with no paywall by Sarah Scire at NiemanLab

For quite a while, operating an independent site has meant getting into a frenemy relationship with Big Tech. Yes, they pay some ad money, and can be shamed into writing checks (CA News Funding Agreement Falls Short), but they also grab as much reader data as possible in order to target the same readers in cheaper contexts, including some of the worst places on the Internet. But the bargain is changing rapidly—Big Tech is taking site content in order to keep eyeballs, not send them to the source. And sometimes worse: Copilot AI calls journalist a child abuser, Microsoft tries to launder responsibility. So The Backlash Against AI Scraping Is Real and Measurable. At first this situation seems like a massive value extraction crisis. If the ads move to AI content, and surveillance ad money goes away, where will the money for new data journalism and investigative reporting come from?

As a privacy nerd, I’m an optimist about this apparent mess. Yes, part of success in running a modern news operation is figuring out how to get by without legacy management layers and investors (404 Media Shows Online Journalism Can Be Profitable When You Remove Overpaid, Fail-Upward Brunchlords From The Equation). But the other big set of trends is technical and regulatory improvements that—if kept up and not worked around—will lower the ROAS (return on ad spendnot rodents of average size) for surveillance advertising. So the Internet optimist version of the story is

1. Big Tech value extraction drives independent journalists to business models other than surveillance advertising

2. Users choose effective privacy tools and settings (If the sites you like don’t need surveillance ads, and the FBI and FTC say they’re crooked, you might as well join the ad blocking trend to be on the safe side. Especially the YouTube ads…yeech)

3. People with better privacy protection buy better goods and services

4. With the money saved in step 3, people can afford more subscriptions.

The big objection to that is: what about free riding problems? Won’t people choose not to subscribe, or choose infringing or AI-exfiltrated versions of content? But most people aren’t as likely to try to free ride as tech executives are. The rise of 404 Media and related sites is a good sign. More: or we could just not

Related

Purple box claims another victim

privacy economics sources

Bonus links

Scoop: The Trade Desk is building its own smart TV OS On the web, the Trade Desk is on the high end as far as adtech companies go, less likely to put advertisers’ money into illegal stuff than some of the others. Could be a win for smart TV users who want the ads. And, nice timing for TTD, the California bill requiring Global Privacy Control only applies to browsers and smartphone platforms, not TVs.

Satori Threat Intelligence Alert: Camu cashes out ads on piracy content (This is why you don’t build an inclusion list by looking at the ad reports and adding what looks legit. Illegal sites can check Referer headers and hide their real content from advertisers who cut and paste the URL. Referer lists have to be built from known legit sources like customer surveys, press lists, support tickets, and employee chat logs.)

U.S. State Privacy Laws – A Lack of Imagination So far, the laws have been underwhelming. They use approaches and measures (sensitive data, rights, notice-and-choice, etc.) that are either unworkable (I argue elsewhere that sensitive data doesn’t work) or ineffective. (fwiw I say avoid all this stuff and set up a surveillance licensing system. This story backs up that point: Don’t Sleep On Maryland’s Strict New Data Privacy Law (if the way to comply is to hire more lawyers, not protect customers better, the law is suboptimal.)

Murky Consent: An Approach to the Fictions of Consent in Privacy Law – FINAL VERSION (I don’t know many people who know enough about surveillance advertising to actually give informed consent to it.)

Your use of AI is directly harming the environment I live in Instead of putting limits to “AI” and cryptocoin mining, the official plan is currently to destroy big parts of places like Þjórsárdalur valley, one of the most green and vibrant ecosystems in Iceland. That’s why I take it personally when people use “AI” models and cryptocoins. You are complicit in creating the demand that is directly threatening to destroy the environment I live in. None of this would be happening if there wasn’t demand so I absolutely do think the people using these tools and services are personally to blame, at least partially, for the harm done in their name.

Thinking About an Old Copyright Case and Generative AI The precedent in Wheaton has often been highlighted by anti-copyright scholars because it limits the notion that copyright rights are in any sense natural rights. This, in turn, supports the skeptical (I would say cynical) view that copyright is a devil’s bargain with authors, begrudgingly granting a temporary “monopoly” in exchange for production and distribution of their works. But aside from the fact that the Court of 1834 stated that the longstanding question remained “by no means free from doubt,” its textual interpretation of the word securing was simply unfounded. (Some good points here. IMHO neither the copyright maximalists nor the techbro my business model is always fair use crowd are right. Authors and artists have both natural rights and property-like commercial interests that are given to them by the government as a subsidy.)

Plain Vanilla – a tutorial website for vanilla web development The plain vanilla style of web development makes a different choice, trading off a few short term comforts for long term benefits like simplicity and being effectively zero-maintenance. This approach is made possible by today’s browser landscape, which offers excellent web standards support.