Why Journalists Are Leaving Big Media (with Maddy Myers)

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26:56so you and zoe realized that you needed to launch this new thing walk me through that moment where you said we should try this versus like we should go work in you know comms or something like we should go freelance. Yeah, like we should we should go into PR. I feel like in my telling my miniature life story, career story, I've sort of left out the part where I also became really jaded over time. And like, I think that kind of happens to everyone, every every feminist, certainly, but like also everyone about everyone left leaning politics in general, I think is that over the past decade, I just started being like, maybe people don't even care about feminism anymore, you know?

27:35Maybe people don't even care about, like, having a specific angle for a story. Like, it wouldn't even have occurred to me in 2025 and 2026 to think about that. And so, I really have to give credit to Zoe here because after we both quit Polygon and were, like, DMing each other on Discord and just, like, talking about how existential we were, being like, what are we doing with our lives? She was the one who was like, you know, when I think about what I really want to do. It's actually found a feminist games website. And I was like, I feel like I'm talking to myself in the past. She's also 10 years younger than I am.

28:08I'm 39. And I feel like she is therefore in a different place in her career where she like, still, I mean, it sounds crazy, but it's like, she still believes she can change the world. And like, we all actually still need to believe that because we can. And, and I, as corny as that is, I'm like, we actually can. And we do a little bit every day. Because when I think about like what changed my mind when I was like a teenage girl and I was like, I'm not a feminist. Like I was reading The Border House, which is like this old feminist gaming blog. And like I was reading Shakespeare and I was reading feministgamers.com and like all these live journal groups and stuff.

28:47I was like reading what was there. And I was like, all right, they're making points. I see where they're coming from. I see what this feminism thing is all about. Like those things really changed my mind. and I want to be that for someone now and I think we still need that like it it never stopped being necessary and if anything it's more necessary now because I look around and I'm like no one's doing this like it just doesn't exist anymore like there's the flytrap which is like a feminist newsletter that I read um that's founded by a lot of like uh feminist bloggers who've been around for a while even that I'm like that's like one of the only examples I can think of that's that's kind of doing that type of thing.

29:29And it's upsetting. So I also am like, maybe we need to bring some of this energy back. Like the men's rights movement is back. So maybe we need to bring some of this other energy back to where we're like, actually, no, we don't have to, we don't have to live like this. Yeah, actually, no. It's just a complete sentence. And so why did you decide to do a media outlet versus just going your freelance ways or trying to get another job? I think because the fact that Polygon was sold and the fact that I have watched other publications get sold, it really made it clear to me the extent to which I don't own my work.

30:12And that is a really upsetting feeling if you've written as much as I have over the years. Like there's so many stories I own, don't own rather, that are offline, for example. Like a ton of my Phoenix stories are really hard to access now. And like some of my stories, like the URLs have changed multiple times. The layouts have changed multiple times. You can barely read them anymore. That makes me crazy. When they change the link, I'm like, fuck. Yeah, like I used to have a writing portfolio on my website. I don't have it anymore because I'm like, I cannot keep up with where these URLs are even located anymore.

30:45Like, my own work is, like, ephemeral, and that's part of publishing online is that it is ephemeral. But I also have no control over what happens to it. Like, at this point, like, all my stories for the Mary Sue are profiting Gamers Group, and they're making financial decisions I don't agree with. And, like, all the stories that I wrote for Kotaku gave a profit to Jim Spanfeller, and all the stories that I wrote for Polygon are profiting Valnet. The list goes on, and, like, of course they are. Like, I'm making the most obvious statement in the world. This is what it is to have a job, right? You write these things, they don't belong to you.

31:20You have no right to them. And they made me money during the specific time period that I worked there, but now they don't make me money anymore, even though some of those stories actually still get traffic. And that is just sort of this inherently just kind of demoralizing thing. Like, it's just like death by a thousand cuts, right? So after Polygon, I was like, this has happened to me too many times. I can't, if I'm going to do something like this again, I'm going to do it on my own terms. I'm going to own it. And that means that I've also created a freelance contract whereby there's a clause where freelancers can like ask to republish the work after 30 days.

32:00And that may sound really simple, but like a lot of contracts don't include things like that. And like that type of thing, I'm just like, let's just normalize it. Let's just make it so that people can own their own work and like have it on their own terms if they want to. So that was a big reason was that that and I'm like, if I found this website, I'm never going to sell it. I know my own morals. I'm going to own mothership until it dies or I die. And I that's it. You know, this will with any luck. This will be the last job I ever have. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that is how we view 404 also. It's like we don't know how to do anything else.

32:38Yeah, that too. I don't know how to do anything else. Right. Yeah. It's like I don't have any other skills that I could use to have a job anymore. So this is what we're doing. And that was kind of that was the conclusion we came to also. It was like we can't keep going in a world that we don't own this very important to us, very personally important and important to our readers work where, you know, like the company that we're writing for can just change the URL, break the link, take it down entirely, cover it in the craziest ads. and put it behind a subscription wall, which is new and interesting.

33:15But yeah, it's like just getting used to archiving your work and doing that enough times and then realizing, oh, actually, I don't want to have to think about this in the way that I'm thinking about it because I want to be able to know where my story is going to be in six months in a year so I can reference it again because this is all building on something that is a body of work and is relating to itself. And it's very frustrating when it disappears, and it does disappear sometimes. It does. Or it's just that the person that owns your work previously is just not an operator with whom you agree anyway, and maybe that's a compromise you're willing to make for a time period, but then that person is willing to resell it to someone else who also makes other decisions with it.

34:00And to just have all of that be out of your hands, it's tough. I mean, I think, like, if I had chosen to just freelance, I'm really appreciative that there's a lot of outlets that I could pitch to now, including 404, but, like, all these other kind of independent outlets that I could write for where I do actually feel that sense of trust. Where I'm like, I don't think, like, Aftermath is going to sell their archives. Like, I just, I don't think that's going to happen. And that gives me a lot of comfort, too, to be like, even for the writers out there, I mean, I hope our freelance writers feel this way about us as well, where it's like, we're going to try to look out for you every step of the way in a way that other jobs that you've had couldn't because the editor you were writing for also kind of didn't own their own section, didn't have a lot of control over what they even got to say yes to.

34:53And that's depressing. Like, we gotta put the power. Now I'm like, I'm saying my sermon from the mouth. We gotta put the power in the hands of the journalists. You know, like, it's, I think that's the only way, though. We've all got to learn how to use financial software and become small business owners. I don't like it either. Unfortunately. But it's better than the alternative. I've tried the alternative for a long time, and this is better. Yeah. And like, I mean, this is it is something that like I think was a learning curve for us, for me in particular. Jason and Emmanuel were in some of the rooms where they were making some of the more higher level decisions at Motherboard, for example.

35:31But I was just a journalist before this and not thinking about the not thinking about the financials very intentionally. They kept the rest of the team very separate from those decisions because they do tend to distract from the work. And so I'm wondering how you and Zoe are finding being business people now, running a company while also doing the work. Because it does feel like two halves of your brain that you're having to navigate all day long. You're having to switch between, you know, how am I going to think about my subscription flow? And then how am I going to think about getting this source to talk to me?

36:09Are two different things. But you have to do them both in the same 30-minute span. it's true it's true I I think that takes getting used to but I I personally have the benefit of having been more and I guess the Jason or Emmanuel role in the sense that at Polygon at least and at Kotaku I was deputy editor by the time I left and that meant that then when I went to Polygon and I was running the game section and I was in a lot of leadership meetings where we talked about our financials at Polygon so I had a lot of insight into how the site was doing financially and what those decisions were. And that was really cool.

36:42I really appreciated getting all those insights because it taught me a lot and it showed me a lot about how you can make it work. And I think that's a huge benefit that I have. That and the fact that we launched TripleClick, which is my podcast, as an independent venture. Like, TripleClick is also an LLC. It also has financials and things that we have to consider about, like, how are we going to spend the money? And having had those experiences already, I'm just at such an advantage, I've realized, compared to a lot of other people who are like, I'm doing this for the first time, where I think it is like getting dunked into cold water and just being like, oh my god, there's so much to think about.

37:19This is really hard. And I don't want to undersell that. It is just an advantage I had, was that I already had to think about the business of a publication for many years before doing this. And I'm so grateful, honestly. It's just luck that I was able to be in those positions and also be led into those rooms earlier in my career so that I could make those decisions now. And also, it is kind of different now because Polygon obviously had a lot more money than Mothership does. So we were talking about very different amounts and also very different income streams. Like, Polygon did sponsored content.

37:56It did e-commerce and it did ad deals. And those were like three pretty equal income streams. Like each of those was like one third of Polygon's income. We really had diversified income streams. And that was always like a huge comfort to us. At Mothership, the stressful part is that we have one income stream and it's subscribers and that's it. And like really what I think you're getting at is the fact that a lot of times in journalism, we're separate from ad deals because psychologically you don't want to be selling ads against your content because it you don't want it to bias you like you even subconsciously like you don't want to be in a position where you're like okay like we're selling a bunch of ads to star trek this week they got a new show and they we got star trek all over the site but oh we got an opinion story this week about how the new star trek sucks ass like should we maybe not publish that like Like, that's not even a conversation you want to have, you know?

38:52Like, you want to just run that story without even knowing those Star Trek Flash ads are going to be there. You know what I mean? Like, you want to just not even have that be a consideration and not even have to think to yourself, oh, what if I piss off this advertiser? Like, ideally, you have that barrier to the degree that you have an advertising department that's like, oh, well, we pissed off this advertiser, but it's our job to find other ones. And it's why, if ever Mothership does sell ads, we are hoping to contract it out to someone who can do it for us. Because I already am aware of those psychological barriers, and I don't want to have to face them.

39:27I don't want that to have to be a moral quandary I face. And so it's part of why we haven't got ads right now is because I'm like, this is a problem. We need to figure out how to do it. And I know you at 404 have chosen to have ads, and I'm sure this is a conversation you've had. And it's really hard. I think that's probably the hardest part is like the advertising barrier and like trying to factor that in. But for now, we just are dealing with subscribers, which is also stressful because I'm like, my readers are literally paying my rent. I hope they like what we're doing because if they leave, then that's one less person's money.

40:00And it's, you know, you worry about things like that. But, you know, I'd be worried about anything. I'd be worried about anything at any other job. Yeah, there are worse things to worry about, honestly. And it is, I mean, the advertising thing is like, it's interesting to see some of the other indies kind of where they land on this and like where they evolve on this. It's something that we've had since we had the door open to since the beginning. And then pretty early on, we were like, actually, I think we can do this because it is another thing that we have control over. Unlike a publication where you're not in control of what ads are appearing next to your articles that you might not agree with and you might not support.

40:39we can say actually we can put down this like barrier between us and we we do have a um a service that does our ads and like they're selling the ads but we can talk to them directly and that's another piece of the company that we control yeah which is pretty empowering too i would imagine yeah for sure um we can make those decisions but then also with the subscribers it's like we've gotten to the point where the people who are coming to the site are not anymore our like friends family and fans they're new here which is an interesting thing and they have opinions about our coverage and they make them known and they do sometimes say i'm gonna unsubscribe because i don't agree with what you wrote and that's their prerogative that's totally fine but it is something that you have to kind of get used to hearing and taking into consideration with a very small grain of salt as long as you know what you're writing what you're publishing is something that you believe in and you stand by, people will probably disagree with it sometimes and probably won't like it.

41:42And they won't like the other business decisions that we make either. And that's okay. You're not, you don't have to like everything we do. This is now a big group of us. It's like a big audience, a big readership. Thank God. That's a great problem to have. But, you know, people who are like, I'm not, people are obviously not familiar with our work already coming in and saying, I think that you should cover it this way and that way. And we're kind of like, the people who know us know. they know that we have and that we will and that we that's all again part of a much larger conversation of our beats but it is the subscription model is such a different thing and i'm sure it was such a learning curve for you guys also it still is i think i mean it's after two and a half months i'm still every day like this is crazy like a completely different way of thinking about stories yeah we still learn new things about how to do it and um the best ways to do it and it's all good.

42:33It's all good learning. It is. And it's all ultimately so freeing comparatively to write for people who are directly interested in what you are writing. Just that alone is huge. Yeah, definitely. You wrote a piece that we'll link to in the show notes for The Guardian before launch or simultaneously with launch. And you wrote the problem I saw with the idea of a founding website that you founded was not that people wouldn't want it, but that you didn't see a good way to pay for it. Journalism is facing a monetization crisis since the advent of the internet. It's hard to convince readers to pay for something that they are used to getting for free.

43:15And then I was listening to the Post Games podcast with Chris Plant, your former Polygon colleague. Yeah, former boss. Now also an independent creator. Yes. A small business owner of the podcast post game. And also linked to that episode. It was a really good episode. Really interesting that some of the history stuff I had no idea about. But you said in that podcast with Zoe, we need to renormalize paying for journalism, which again, as we touched on earlier, it's something that audiences need to renormalize themselves with. And also journalists need to renormalize the idea that your work is worth more than like a click and that you do deserve to be compensated fairly for your labor.

43:55What a concept. This used to actually already be normal. So like I was playing this game News Tower, which is like set in the 1930s and you're a newspaper tycoon in that game. You're actually like a total degenerate newspaper tycoon who's in the pocket of the mob. So maybe this comparison isn't entirely fair. But something that really shocked me about that game because it's set during the Great Depression. So all of your readers are like hard up, but they will pay for your newspaper. because they have to. And like one of the things that I did before deciding on the payment tiers for mothership was actually look up.

44:26I was like, okay, we're in hard economic times right now. Like in 2026, we are. How much were people paying for newspapers in the Great Depression? And let me like adjust that for inflation and like imagine like, okay, how many stories were they publishing? That was actually part of how I decided that$7 a month was gonna be how much we charged. It was because I was like, I'm imagining a paper like ours, a really tiny paper. What would you charge for that in a really tough economic time? But a time period when people were used to paying for journalism. What would that look like? Well, maybe that's crazy.

45:01I don't know. I love that. I just was like, how do I decide? How do I decide how much we charge? And that's how I settled on seven bucks a month. But I think that's about right, you know, seven to ten. It's kind of what a lot of our peers are paying and or charging rather. And I think it's reasonable. And I think we just have to start being like, this is reasonable. And if this is what you want, you're paying for people to do a job. And that's what it is. And you're getting something in exchange for it. Yeah. If you're sad when you see your favorite journalists get laid off, but you're also saying, I can't click on this because there's a paywall.

45:36I can't read this because you put a paywall up. Yeah. I have questions about you as like, you must be the median voter because you're very confusing to me. Yeah, I mean, I think they probably are the median voters. And I'm not sure any of them are actually reading our sites. I think those are just people who are complaining to dunk on us. But I also know there are people out there just from our back end. There are definitely people out there who I think are paying$7 one time to read an article and then leaving. And for the record, I'm okay with that, too. I'm happy to have that happen. I think that's okay, too.

46:08Maybe you can only afford to pay it once and you see some stories on our site that you're like, I really just want to read these. Great. That's okay, too. It's all okay. If anything, I wish we had more models where I could let you pay a dollar for just one story. Our CMS hasn't implemented that functionality yet. But you pay what you can when you can. As long as you're respecting the value of what we do, then we're golden. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I only really have one question for you left and it is an annoying one and it is one that we get. And it's not annoying that people ask it. It is annoying that I don't ever really have a very good answer because...

46:45So you're going to stump me with it? So I'm going to stump you with it. But I mean, maybe you probably have a much wiser answer than I do. Usually I'm like, I don't know. I don't know what tomorrow is going to bring. But what do you see as your biggest challenge ahead of you? What are you seeing as like the next kind of barrier, the next like thing that you guys are going to achieve that you're going to jump over? Like, what's the horizon for you guys? So I there's so many challenges already that it's like, oh, my God, I don't know. What's the next challenge? Jesus, I think I'm already I'm worried about the current challenges.

47:14So I had I had gone into this just being like, well, maybe we'll get a few hundred subscribers and that'll be a huge success. And like within a couple of years, we'll have thousands, I hope. but we actually already got, we have about 2 ,200 subscribers now. And that's huge. And like, that is a huge number that I honestly didn't think we'd achieve so quickly. And so instead, I think our current challenges are about how best to spend the money. Because of our business model, we publish a ton of freelance stories. And that's because of the mission of our site. We want to publish marginalized people.

47:48We don't want the perspectives to just be me and Zoe. So the biggest chunk of the pie chart for us is actually our freelance budget every month. And then Zoe and I make less as a result. I'm hoping that eventually we can have enough subscribers that we can maintain that big freelance budget and pay Zoe and I more of a livable wage. That's like our next goal that I'm hoping we can reach. But my fear, like if we're kind of casting further into the future is, what would it look like if we were to grow? Who would be the next person we would hire? What would that role be? Like thinking about that, I think is really difficult, especially like looking at a landscape where so many of our peers have been laid off and I know of so many talented people that I'm like oh I'd love to work with them I'd love to work with them and like at Polygon I had this benefit of having dozens and dozens of co-workers and like if I was publishing something about like I don't know Resident Evil or whatever I could be like oh my god there's like four people here who are big Resident Evil fans and I could just send this draft to them and be like are we screwing anything up like I've lost all of that you know like I have I don't have all that institutional knowledge.

48:50It's just me and Zoe and we have Nicole Clark and Alyssa Mercanti have been doing some freelance editing work for us. So it's not like there aren't more people who are working on editing for us, which is amazing. We're capable of paying freelance editors from our big freelance pot. But I'm just like, I'd be so, so awesome if Mothership was a huge publication. But like, what is the journey between here and there? I don't know. I hope to get there. I would love, I would love to be a big publication. I just I don't know how we get there and I don't want to screw it up on the way so that's what I worry about is growth actually is like how do we grow sustainably and I think that's probably the same fear we all have right like how do we how do we make this work and actually grow yeah yeah and it does feel it's like I guess also just uniquely from journalism perspective of like everything changes all the time the next three months might not look like the last three months in the economy in the industry.

49:49You know, like, it's just everything could collapse in any moment is the mindset that we're coming out of as journalists who've been at these bigger outlets. So having these problems of like, okay, now it feels like things are pretty stable. So now what is not a problem that I've had in a minute because I've not been able to like think that project that far into that. It's like, it's like, oh, when am I going to get laid off? Yeah, I know. It's like, well, I better I better treasure this job now because get end at any time is how I have often thought about jobs. Yeah. I better take the salary and like get all my doctor's appointments in and get the PTO taken and like make sure everything is in order before I get laid off because that's going to happen in the next six months.

50:29How much dental work can I get done in the next year? How many prescriptions do I need to fill? Yeah. And it's just getting out of that mindset I think is a big part of the first few months slash years. is, you know, now what? Everything is stable and we're in calmer seas. How do we grow this into something that feels really good and doesn't betray any of our original dreams and vision for the thing, but also evolves in a way that feels natural and sustainable? So if we figured out, well, you know, just kidding. I mean, well, it's something that we talk about literally all the time is growth and how to grow and when to grow and if to grow.

51:12I had a conversation last night that was with a, I went to a fellowship dinner at Columbia with mid-career journalists and they're in business school and they were like, what's your growth plan? And also what's the, how is the temptation to just be small forever? Yeah, I think that's completely reasonable. And there are absolutely days where I'm like, maybe mothership is me and Zoe forever. And we just keep increasing the freelance budget. I don't know. Yeah, there's so many different ways to do it. I also don't really want that. I really do eventually want it to have more people. Yeah, I do. Yeah, the collaborative aspect is huge.

51:47Yeah, having having full time co workers, I can't can't be said enough. But I mean, we've both been freelance writers at one time or another, and I value them so much and appreciate so much what they do for us. But I'm also like, I want to be able to give more people full-time jobs and also have more co-workers to interface with and help improve the site in like a longer term basis. And you got to have that. We got to get back to that reality within this sustainable model that we've created. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm so excited to see what's next for you two and for the site and for everything you're going to do.

52:27It's so cool. Right back at you. It's so, so great that we exist in a world where 404 Media can be read every day. It's wonderful. Yeah. I mean, I feel like the era that we're in, whatever it is, is very exciting with all the new indies coming out. And we're all building on each other, learning from each other all the time, which is my favorite part of doing this whole wacky thing that we're doing. So thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. Everyone go to mothership.blog. Subscribe immediately at the highest year you possibly can. Make it a yearly subscription, please. I'm okay.

53:05No, no, no. No, no, no. All right. Make a yearly subscription. It's a pretty fun perk. Make it recurring. And yeah, support Maddie and Zoe because their work is phenomenal. And go check out the site. They just wrote about Marathon. Oh, my God. Aren't we all worried about how it's doing? I don't play it. I don't know anything about it. The guys were like, get out. And I was like, goodbye. Go talk about marathon because I do not know anything about it. So if you're listening to this and you just listened to that podcast, go read their marathon coverage because maybe I'll go read it and learn something.

53:41As a reminder, 44 Media is a journalist founded and supported by a subscriber's company. If you wish to subscribe to 44 Media and directly support our work, please go to 44Media.co. You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad-free version of this podcast. you'll also get to listen to the subscribers only section where we talk about a bonus story each week which is where the marathon coverage is i think i haven't listened yet this podcast is made in partnership with kaleidoscope and alissa midcalf another way to support us is by leaving a five-star rating and review for the podcast that really helps us out this has been four for media we'll see you again next time