When we launched 404 Media in August 2023, it was a leap of faith. We were leaving the world of big, corporate media — where we worked for years alongside exceptionally brilliant colleagues, but also under the constant turmoil of investor whims, executive decisions we had no say in, and “economic headwinds” that sounded a lot like excuses for lumbering, ineffective business models.
When we each put in our notice and leapt into the unknown, we did so hoping we’d have support. People already knew what we were capable of: impactful, important, conversation-defining work. We hoped people would keep caring about the journalism we wanted to make, and would help us keep doing it. At the time, we wrote:
“We believe that if we do this journalism well enough, you, our readers, will be willing to subscribe because you think it’s important, because you think it should exist in the world, and because you feel you’re personally getting value from it.”
It’s an incredible feeling to look back at the last three years and be able to say that hope and belief was backed up, week after week and month after month, by your support. Every year, we host an event to say thank you for that support and to get off our computers and see you IRL (for old times’ sake, here are the year one and year two recaps). This year, with your support, we were able to host two events: a live tapping of the podcast and an afterparty the next night.
Again, we took a leap and hoped you’d show up for two events. It was something we’ve never tried before. And again you showed up for each other and us: We completely sold out BOTH of our events in NYC.
Today, the gang is still recovering from all the festivities, and we’ll likely have more to say on the topic of running this little news outfit for three whole years later in the week. But in the meantime, we wanted to share a few memories from our anniversary celebrations.
First and foremost, thank you to DeleteMe for helping make these events possible. They’re graciously offering 20% off a privacy protection plan for friends of 404 Media so don’t miss out on that.
We were spoiled by WNYC’s Greene Space crew on Thursday night, getting the celeb treatment as we put on a live taping of the podcast. They have an awesome ongoing slate of performances and events, check ’em out. Thank you to everyone who came out, packed the house, laughed out loud and groaned with us about the state of the world. The first question from the Ask Us Anything box was “ARE WE GOING TO BE OKAY?” and although it’s complicated, gatherings like these make us all feel like the answer is yes.
Thank you to 404 contributors Becky Ferreira and Matthew Gault, who took the time to come out to NYC and share the latest on data center resistance and weird, weird science. Crab in a bottle, you live on in our hearts.
We’ll publish the full taping as a pod episode soon, but in the meantime, you can relieve it on our YouTube channel.
The next night, we took it to Brooklyn to kick back with a beer at Threes Brewing in Gowanus. Thank you to the entire team at Threes for being wonderfully supportive and keeping the absolutely bangin’ chicken and french fries flowing. Here are a bunch of pics from that night, mostly taken by Sam; photography skills are not her passion so please forgive the trash aesthetic:
Not yet a paid subscriber? Ready to come with us into Year Four? Become a subscriber at the Supporter level here. You’ll get ad-free experience, unlimited access to our articles, commenting privileges on the site, the full text RSS feed, access to Behind The Blog content where we write about how we reported our stories, early access to our weekly podcast plus bonus content, and more.
Stay tuned for what we’re up to next. We have some cool stuff in store for year four.
