By
Jessica Weiss
Crowdfunding is often cited as an
alternative funding source for news, but journalists who launch a campaign on
Kickstarter have the odds stacked against them.
According to new statistics from Kickstarter, the popular
worldwide crowdfunding platform, the success rate for journalism projects on
the site since its launch in 2009 is 34.38 percent—less than the sitewide
success rate of 42.74 percent.
A little over 65 percent of the 1,346
total journalism projects proposed have been unsuccessful, meaning that they
didn’t reach their funding goals and thus were not funded at all. Kickstarter
doesn't allow partial funding of project. It's all or nothing.
When money is pledged to a project that
fails to receive full funding, Kickstarter refunds the money to the project's
would-be donors. So far, more than US$452,000 has been returned to donors of
journalism projects that didn't reach their goals.
That success rate is similar to
projects launched in categories like games and crafts. (Music, theater and
dance projects have had some of the highest success rates on the site.)
Now, Kickstarter is trying to up the
odds for journalism projects. Until June, journalism projects on Kickstarter
did not fall into their own category. Instead, they were placed under
categories like Publishing or Nonfiction. So Kickstarter created a specific
journalism project category and re-categorized older projects that previously
would have been considered journalism.
“We really love journalism projects and
want to give them more visibility on the site,” Kickstarter communications
representative David Gallagher told IJNet. “And creating a separate category
for them is a way to do that.”
As the meaning of journalism shifts,
the category allows project owners to determine what is an act of journalism
and who is a journalist.
“It’d be a vast understatement to say
the world of journalism is currently experiencing a lot of change,” Kickstarter
wrote in a statement. “To us, that
means it’s more important than ever to make sure journalists have the tools and
resources to try new things—whether they’re professionals looking for
innovative ways of funding and sharing their work, or ordinary folks with a
hunger to tell the stories around them.”
Despite the high rate of unsuccessful
projects, the site has been used to fund groundbreaking journalism. So far, 385
journalism projects have been successfully funded; the majority (238) raised
between US$1,000 and US$9,999.
Journalists have used Kickstarter in a
range of ways. Some have raised money to help them cover stories that were
underreported or overlooked by mainstream outlets. Editorial cartoonist Ted
Rall, raised money to travel independently to remote
provinces in Afghanistan to cover the war. Photojournalist Gerd
Ludwig, traveled to Chernobyl to document the aftermath of the
nuclear disaster 25 years later.
Others have used Kickstarter for
projects that use innovative and interactive storytelling. Homicide Watch raised money
to cover every murder in Washington, DC, for one year, using primary source
documents, social networking and original reporting. FOIA Machine aimed to streamline the complicated
process of filing and tracking public record requests. Matter brought together
reporters from leading global news outlets to launch a new platform focused on
in-depth, long-form journalism.
Established publishers and
organizations, both large and small, have used Kickstarter as a lab to
innovate, including increased audience engagement and interactivity. National
Public Radio’s Planet Money T-Shirt project
traced the global supply chain by following the creation of a tee shirt. More
than 20,000 contributors gave a combined total of more than US$590,000, which
was more than 10 times the amount the program sought.
And earlier this year,
IJNet interviewed the founder of a small regional tech
news site who funded a print magazine for the South by Southwest Interactive
conference through a Kickstarter campaign.
The campaign brought in US$9,300, surpassing the fundraising goal by more than
US$2,000.
Along with the creation of a new
category for journalism, Kickstarter also announced a new curation partnership with
The Guardian. The move aims to provide more resources for journalists looking
to innovate and investigate.
To learn more and use the platform,
visit Kickstarter.
Jessica Weiss is a Bogotá-based freelance
journalist.
Image courtesy of Flickr user 401(K) 2012 under a Creative Commons license.
Source: Ijnet.org
No comments:
Post a Comment