Crowdfunding Is The Future Of Journalism

YOU buy that newspapers because of the writers. So why not just sponsor your favourite writer (ahem). Financial ratings firm Fitch put out a report predicting that “several cities could go without a daily print newspaper by 2010″.

So when your newspaper dies, you lose the writer, too.

“Crowdfunding” is micro-donations via the Internet. And it works:

Political bloggers such as Josh Marshall and Andrew Sullivan, and tech blogger Jason Kottke have raised thousands of dollars from online fundraisers in the past. And freelance reporter/blogger Chris Allbritton financed a trip to cover the Iraq War in 2003 by raising nearly $15,000 from his readers, and wrote dispatches on his Back to Iraq blog.

Allbritton was able to finance a drastic change of beats, going from being a media and technology reporter to becoming a foreign correspondent covering war zones in the Middle East. By supporting his trip to Iraq, Allbritton’s readers helped him gain steady work as a freelance correspondent to Time magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle and New York Daily News.

Good news, then. Talent will out. And the hacks will not be reliant on advertisers:

Five of the top 10 ad categories, accounting for more than 40% of ad spend will be down, Fitch predicts: retail; automotive; financial services; general services; and airlines, hotels and car rentals.

Freedom is upon us. (Sponsor the Anroak, if you must)…

Anorak

Posted: 4th, December 2008 | In: Media Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink