We're about halfway between the reports we put out each year to let people know how Hell Gate is doing as an organization, as a business, and as an experiment in worker-owned local journalism. You can read our last report here, and we'll have a full update for you in the fall. But in the meantime, today we passed a milestone that we wanted to share with you:
This morning, after almost three years in operation, we received our millionth dollar in subscription revenue.
As far as milestones go, it's a humble one—as of last year, the New York Times was making a million dollars in subscription revenue every two days. But for Hell Gate, crossing this (admittedly symbolic) threshold is an opportunity for reflection and gratitude.
When the idea of our worker-owned, New York City-specific publication began to take shape in early 2022, we weren't sure if the concept was going to fly, financially speaking. We had a hunch that there was a place in the New York media ecosystem for something independently homegrown and focused on local stories and citywide issues, a publication for those in love with the city who want to learn more about what makes it such a glorious, confounding, ever-fascinating place to live.
We were far less certain, having spent our adult lives watching the business models that had supported journalism for the last century crumble and collapse, that enough people would be willing to pay their hard-earned money for that kind of publication, such that it would be able to survive, much less grow.
So, it has been incredibly heartening to learn that people value Hell Gate enough to keep us going, and even to allow us to hire more people so we can bring you more Hell Gate. Because that's the deal: Our revenue isn't paying back venture capital investors or lining the pockets of private equity. We did not, for better or for worse, buy a Ferrari F12 TDF supercar with your million dollars. We plowed it right back into the journalism machine to make more journalism.
It's a strange time to be celebrating success and (relative, for-now-at-least) financial stability. But we wanted to share this moment with you, because Hell Gate is a cooperative not just in the sense that our journalists own the company, but in the sense that we are a collaborative endeavor with our subscribers. We are building this thing side by side, and we can all be proud of how far we've come together.
If you're already a subscriber, thanks for being a part of Hell Gate. If you're not, but you think this city (and this country!) needs independent, resilient, worker-owned journalism, please consider subscribing. And, subscriber or not, you can always put something in our tip jar.
Let's see how far we can take this thing.