Under increasing financial pressure from the web and the decline of print advertising, newspapers and other traditional media outlets have been laying off staff and trying to fill the gap with services such as Journatic — the hyper-local aggregator that uses offshore workers — or simply doing without things like copy editors. But are there other solutions to that reporting gap? Crowdsourcing journalism through sites like Reddit could be one, but crowdfunding could be another: one journalist in Michigan has raised funding through a Kickstarter campaign so he can travel around the U.S. interviewing people about the upcoming election. Could crowdfunding allow other journalists to do investigative or in-depth projects as well?
The idea of crowdfunding journalism isn’t a new one: journalist and entrepreneur David Cohn started a company called Spot.us in 2008 to do exactly that, and had some notable successes, such as a feature on the “garbage patch” in the Pacific Ocean, a joint project with the New York Times. Earlier this year, the company was acquired by American Public Media and merged with the Public Insight Network, and the website says it has more than 15,000 contributors and 110 publishing partners (Cohn has since moved on to a new project, a media startup called Circa).
Crowdfunding might work better for individuals
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