Six months in, journalist-owned tech publication 404 Media is profitable
NiemanLab reports: Until January, most stories from 404 Media were available to read for free. But after the four cofounders discovered — through their own reporting — that their stories were being scraped, paraphrased by AI text “spinners,” and published on other websites, they decided to start requiring readers to provide their email addresses to access stories, and they explained why. “We see how Google is degrading in quality. We see how AI content mills are digesting our stories and…