There are multiple devastating forces at play for the world of digital media. Prior to the pandemic, the advertising-reliant business models of upstarts-turned-legacy brands like BuzzFeed and Vice have raised red flags. Those concerns have merely been exacerbated by slashed budgets and uncertain outlooks.

Overall, newsrooms have announced 11,027 job cuts in 2020, up 169.8% from the 4,087 cuts announced in the first half of 2019, according to new data from outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Through June, newsroom cuts are at their highest level since Challenger began tracking them in 2003.

As thousands of editorial jobs are being lost, a group of journalists have come together to form their own venture. Co-founded by 18 former Deadspin employees, along with former Bain consultant Jasper Wang, Defector Media is a forthcoming sports and media blog that’s eschewing the advertising model and going straight for a paywalled approach. Rather than touting ambitious plans to upend the industry, the company is erring on the side of caution and pragmatism, attributes that haven’t been part of the vernacular of the digital media landscape.

“We are going to be, by definition, by design, a modest business with relatively modest goals. The goal here is for these guys to just be able to write, do what they love best with no other interference for as long as we can,” Wang told Yahoo Finance in an interview last week. The model is similar to individual authors who launched their own Substack newsletters.

Defector, which announced its launch on July 28, and has the tagline ‘all of our bullshit, none of theirs,’ saw 10,000 people sign up for a site that isn’t launching until September. A monthly subscription costs $8 per month and the pre-launch annual plan is $69. Wang himself gave a personal loan to kickstart the company, and each of the 19 employees has equal ownership in the company (about 5% each). Writers own the intellectual property for any derivative work that stems from their pieces on the website.

“Employee rights actually matter more than shareholders’. So if you leave the company, you still have your equity stake, but you don't have any voting rights anymore. Your equity doesn’t come with profit distribution. The economic interest is if the company ever gets sold. The operating agreement is extensive, it is unorthodox. Thankfully, our lawyers found it to be an interesting intellectual exercise to work us through,” said Wang.

‘Freeing mind shift’

In addition to each of the founding employees being equal shareholders of the company, critical decisions like hiring and firing will be made democratically, a strategy that could potentially nip systemic issues from the get-go. Wang, as the business leader, or Tom Ley, as the editor-in-chief, can be fired by a two-thirds majority staff vote.