Et nyt begreb indenfor betalt journalistik: Crowdfunding

Du kender muligvis begrebet crowdsourcing, hvor man tager et spørgsmål eller en opgave og deler den ud på en gruppe folk.

Via Dan Gillmors blogindlæg finder jeg Mark Glasers indlæg om crowdfunding. Han spørger, om det kan redde journalistikken.

Crowdfunding går i al sin enkelthed ud på, at en gruppe mennesker, et crowd, donerer penge, funding, til en historie. Som eksempel nævner Glaser Spot.us. Han forklarer, hvordan Spot.us fungerer:

1. Anyone can come up with a “Tip” or story idea they’d like to see covered. People can “pledge” money toward that story.
2. Freelance journalists can sign up to cover those story ideas or pitch their own stories, attaching a cost to writing the story.
3. Once a story has a journalist attached to it, people can donate money to help fund it (but no one can give more than 20% of the total cost of the story).
4. When the story has full funding, the journalist writes the story, and a fact-checker is paid 10% of the funding to edit and check it.
5. Before the story is posted, news organizations have a chance to get exclusive rights to the story by paying the full cost, which is given back to the donors. Otherwise, the story is posted online and any news organization can run the story for free.

Det lyder jo unægteligt interessant, selvom jeg godt kan have mine bange anelser overfor, hvorvidt folk vil lægge penge for en historie, inden den overhovedet er skrevet — især når man tager i betragtnig, hvor svært det er at få folk til at betale for artikler, der allerede er skrevet.

Men et spændende projekt, som det bliver interessant at se, hvordan det går.