Ghost

Hacks/Hackers has come a long way since our first meetup at a bar in San Francisco in November 2009. We’ve evolved from a grassroots movement with meetups around the world to a sharper focus on key topics at the intersection of media and technology, including AI and misinformation. Our digital shingle was long overdue for an update and I’m excited to launch the new https://hackshackers.com website! We’ve also updated our mission statement to reflect where we are today: “Uniting diverse communities and driving technology innovation to foster a thriving information ecosystem that enhances media integrity and public trust.” We advance our mission by convening events, incubating projects and scaling adoption of effective solutions. Thanks to Paul Cheung for your leadership and partnership, Anand Upender for his clean and clear design work, Nevin Thompson for putting the words in order, Ghost for your support and elegant CMS, and as always Jennifer 8. Lee and Anika Gupta for your support on our board. If you’re at the Online News Association conference this week, hope to see you there to talk about how we can work together.?

A year ago today we launched 404 Media. Thanks to the overwhelming support of our subscribers, we're very proud and humbled to say that our business and company is sustainable and stable, and more scoops, investigations, stunts, etc are coming in year 2. For years before launching 404 Media, we watched new media companies become obsessed with wild growth and huge valuations only to crash and burn because of mismanagement, venture capital investment, private equity debt taken at terrible rates, bloated executive pay, big tech algorithm changes, ad market crashes, fancy offices in expensive neighborhoods, and bring in revolving casts of clowns to supposedly clean up the mess. “We propose a simple alternative,” in launching 404 Media, we wrote a year ago. “Pay journalists to do journalism. We believe it is possible to create a sustainable, profitable media company simply by doing good work, making common-sense decisions about costs, and asking our readers to support us.” Running a business for one year does not automatically mean we have figured things out. But our strategy is working, we are growing, and we encourage others to try to do the same thing we're doing. Over the last year, so many people have asked us what they can do to help support us and our work. The answer to that question is simple. If you are a subscriber, keep your subscription active. And if you’re not a subscriber and are financially able,?buy a subscription. The other thing you can do is tell your friends about us. The biggest challenge that we face is?discoverability. To the extent possible, we don’t want to have to rely on social media algorithms, search engines that don’t index us properly and which are increasingly shoving AI answers into their homepages, and an internet ecosystem that is increasingly polluted by low-quality AI spam. We are so thankful for everyone who has subscribed, shared our work, or otherwise supported us. https://lnkd.in/gc79mQE5