Paying for stories

By: Callie McBroom

Crowdfunding is the practice of receiving mini donations through the internet to help fund a venture. It has worked for bands, film makers, and political figures, and now MediaShift is asking if it could work for newspapers.

This site references two local newspapers, Spot.us and Representative Journalism, that are giving the process a try.

Spot.us or anyone else comes up with a story idea, and people pledge money toward the story. Once a freelance Journalists is covering the story, people can donate up to 20% of the total cost of the story to help fund it. After the journalist has written the story, news organizations can pay the full cost to receive exclusive rights, or the story will be posted online for all to see.

Representative Journalism hires a journalist to cover a specific community or issue. The community then supports that journalist to write stories.

There are some bloggers who are using crowdfunding to raise money as well.

Representative Journalism believes that this process can provide high quality journalism, familarize a community with a journalist, and help members of the community value the news in the area.

This could be a good idea if it's used correctly. If not, crowdfunding could lead to conflicts of interest, biased stories, and narrow story selection.

If people are paying for the news, they will demand only that in which they are interested. This could be a big problem potentially for truth and ethics in reporting.