Journalism Paid by Fans

Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites have been a huge boom for independent producers in recent years. For filmmakers, novelists, comic book artists and more, crowdfunding has been a huge help in getting non-corporate-sponsored projects off the ground.

But I have yet to see crowdfunding have a big impact on journalism. In my independent media class I learned about Spot.us, a journalism-focused crowdfunding website that is currently on hiatus. It is a very cool idea but seems to be very selective in terms of who gets to receive funding. I do not think a website like that is what young journalists need; it could make journalists change and shape what they are writing about to make the criteria of the site.

I also learned about Beacon, which is a service that requires a patron to pay $5 a month to one writer hosted on Beacon. If you pay for one writer, then you get access to everything that is hosted on Beacon. This is another cool idea but it requires you to put your content behind a paywall. If a writer does not want to do that, it is not the best path to take. A key to getting a wide audience from the start is allowing your content to be accessed for free and easily shared, and Beacon would stifle that.

I recently wrote an article on VGJ Review about the journalism surrounding crowdfunding and put together this graphic showing the success of video game developers that have used Kickstarter to fund their projects.

Video games make up the largest portion of Kickstarter projects, and the money there looks very promising. I looked up journalism projects on Kickstarter and the selections are not very good. I think the problem is that campaigns have to reach their money goals to get any of that revenue.

The best site I have seen for funding journalism so far is Indiegogo. Projects do not need to reach their goal in order for the creator to get his or her money. If I wanted to get people to support my website, I would ask for money on Indiegogo. Because journalism is project that is continuous, unlike making a movie or a game, the funding needs to be different.

Funding would ideally be continuous. Because (most) people can already write without having to make any money from it, as I do, I think the idea would be to enable the person to spend more time writing. If I made a little money off Indiegogo, I could quit my school job and focus on my passion more without having to worry about my finances.

But again, just because you put an item up for crowdfunding does not mean it will make any money. The trick is to make "true fans," as described in the "1,000 True Fans" article on The Technium. These true fans will buy anything you create and try to get other people to check out your work. You may not need 1,000 to make money but it would sure help. According to the article, reaching 1,000 would make it possible to sustain yourself on that work alone.

Thanks to crowdfunding, I think that number can be set even lower, and hopefully it helps journalists get started on projects that they are passionate about.