Hell Gate NYC

Hello and welcome to the Hellgate Podcast.

My name is Christopher Robbins.

Our usual host, Max Rivlin-Nadler, is on vacation.

Hey, Max.

I'm joined here with three of my Hellgate colleagues, Holly Pritsky.

Hello.

Katie Way.

The reason that I made the decision to have Jessica Tish as the police commissioner-

Hello, I am Max Rivlin-Nadler.

Hellgate, as you know, is a worker-owned subscriber-funded news outlet that typically covers all things New York City.

But this week, on a special episode of The Hellgate Podcast, we're going to Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin.

I went to Wisconsin because we love Eric Adams.

I mean, we love covering Eric Adams.

Adams was charged for bribery back in 2024, but those charges were dropped, if you remember, once the Trump administration took office.

Adams has denied the allegations.

In a statement to Hellgate, PNK Group explained why they hired Adams, and here my colleague, Nick Pinto, will bring this to life.

[upbeat music] Hello, and welcome to The Hellgate Podcast.

I'm Holly Bretwski.

This week we have a very special episode.

Okay.

It rhymes.

Um, so, you know, Hellgate readers are very interested in the topic of taxing the rich.

Mm-hmm.

And, um, you know, this year Mayor Zuani Mandani proposed raising taxes on pe- New Yorkers who make over a million dollars by 2%, and we were, you were opposed to that.

journalist-owned that you should check out, like

Defector, Hellgate, Remap, Aftermath, many others.

So I think try to support... that sort of thing.

Uh, I think it's really important and we've been overwhelmed with the support.

Okay.

Hello and welcome to the Hellgate podcast.

Today, I'm joined by my beloved colleague, Holly Pretzky.

Hello.

Claire and Darielisa both pulled off primary victories with the backing of Mayor Zoran Mamdani and the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.

And if, when...

Elected, both will be part of an exciting new voting block that Hellgate has gotten to watch emerge in real time, kind of an expanded squad, if you will.

So thank you both for being here today.

You know, I read an article yesterday about a snowmobile company and a cheese shop that are on brink of shutting down because of one single policy change, right? You know, the whims of the whims of elected officials.

But what happened was in February of 2024, I started looking at journalists who were getting laid off and starting their own outlets, people like 404 Media, people like Alyssa Walker, who started Torched, people like Hellgate.

And I was interested in what they were going to do next, how they were going to make a go of the paid subscription model, the audience backed model.

And I wanted to know more about how they were thinking about marketing because what I was witnessing was that they weren't really marketing the revenue side of their businesses.

And they were struggling to hit their revenue targets and they were underpaying themselves.

Like, Journalists make such low salaries even when they're working full time at a big newsroom that the fact that they couldn't match that salary right away was like a warning signal to me that something was up with the way that they were executing the business model.

And so I started studying journalists and how they were doing this, specifically the worker owned media model, which Hellgate and 404 run.

And I started talking to them like, how are you thinking about marketing? What's going on with revenue? How do you have your automation set up? Things like that.