Crowd-funded journalism

An idea for fired journalists or a future of downsized newsrooms? Readers raise money to hire reporters to investigate stories and write about what they find.

The New York Times writes about ”A different way to pay for the news you want”.

”You think your local water supply is polluted. But you’re getting the runaround from local officials, and you can’t get your local newspaper to look into your concerns. What do you do?

A group of journalists say they have an answer. You hire them to investigate and write about what they find.”

The Times writes about two new ventures.

• Spot Us, a nonprofit site where anyone can propose a story, though the editors ultimately choose which stories to pursue. ”Then the burden is put on the citizenry, which is asked to contribute money to pay upfront all of the estimated reporting costs. If the money doesn’t materialize, the idea goes unreported.”
• Pro Publica, a group led by Paul Steiger, a former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, is being bankrolled by several major foundations to pursue investigative projects that it will then offer to newspapers and magazines.

The idea for crowd-funded journalism comes from the financial model of many charities and political campaigns – like the Obama one – that use the power of the Web to raise small sums from vast numbers of people, ”making average citizens feel a part of the process in a way they had not felt before.”

Critics say ”the idea of using crowd-funding to finance journalism raises some troubling questions. For example, if a neighborhood with an agenda pays for an article, how is that different from a tobacco company backing an article about smoking?”

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