Since its launch, the Internet has been shaping journalism in many ways. Some of the largest media organizations now must do well on the social media to draw more and more audience and following – giving the web users unprecedented sway over determining the standing and success of media outlets.
But nothing has attracted direct financial participation of public in supporting dissemination of ideas to their liking the way the concept of crowdfunding has over the past years – bridging and broad-basing the relationship and relevance between media productions and the people.
The alternative financing way – also called crowd equity, crowd-sourced fundraising and crowd financing – seems to be the new way of supporting media and cultural projects. While large projects demand plans with pros and cons by the companies, some small and media projects are popular, helping a lot of people to unleash their creative talent and realize dreams – a way of empowerment and ownership.
A Pew Research analysis recently looked at how crowdfunding via the internet has become a popular way to engage public backing and financial support for projects – ranging “from the Coolest Cooler to a virtual reality gaming headset to a prototype of a sailing spacecraft and a bailout fund for Greece.”
The findings reveal that from April 28, 2009 to September 15, 2015, 658 journalism-related projects proposed on Kickstarter, one of the largest single hubs for crowdfunding journalism, received full – or more than full – funding, to the tune of nearly $6.3 million.1
These totals – both in terms of number of projects and funds raised – trail nearly all of Kickstarter’s other funding categories, from music, theater and film to technology and games.
Nevertheless, the number of funded journalism projects has seen an ongoing increase over time and includes a growing number of proposals from established media organizations.
Kickstarter’s April 2009 launch through the end of the year, 17 journalism projects received funding. That number more than tripled just a year later, to 64 projects in 2010. Growth continued, reaching 168 funded projects in 2014 and 173 in the first nine months of 2015.
According to the survey, the amount of money put into these projects grew as well, from $49,256 in 2009 and $263,352 in 2010 to $1,743,668 in the first nine months of 2015.
“Equally striking is the upward trend in the number of people contributing financially to these journalism projects – rising from 792 in 2009 to 25,651 in 2015.”
The majority of funded projects over the seven-year time period,3 71%, were produced by individuals not tied to any journalistic organization – either alone (43%) or as a part of a small group (29%).
![By IreneDeKoning (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://www.viewsnews.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Crowdfunding-1.jpg)
By IreneDeKoning (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
While Kickstarter allows project submissions from 18 different countries, fully 84% asked for pledges in U.S. currency. Most (64%) were to be conducted in the U.S., while 36% proposed overseas work which cut across more than 60 countries.
Overall, the journalism projects produced and revenue gained from these crowdfunded ventures is still a drop in the bucket compared with the original reporting output that occurs on any given day and the roughly $20 billion in revenue generated by newspaper ads alone.
Kickstarter-fueled support for journalism also trails two funding sources that have attracted a fair amount of attention in the journalism world in recent years – philanthropy and venture capital, which Pew Research Center estimated to be in the hundreds of millions in 2013 alone.
The number of journalism-related projects funded over the seven-year period represents a small sliver of total crowdfunding activity on Kickstarter – both in terms of money raised and number of projects.
The just over 650 projects funded over the seven-year period trail every other category, sometimes by a great deal. They are, for example, a far cry from the more than 18,000 film and video projects, more than 6,000 gaming projects and nearly 8,000 art projects. Journalism also trails all project categories but one in money raised, again often by wide margins.
“Nevertheless, the growing activity here is about more than just dollars and cents or prizewinning reporting. In today’s evolving digital era, it represents a new, niche segment of nontraditional journalism driven in large part by public interest and motivation.
“It is bringing voice and visibility to efforts that would likely otherwise go unnoticed or unfunded, adding yet another way for the public to engage in creating, funding and disseminating journalism and adding one more option to the arsenal of revenue sources that the industry is desperately seeking to build up,” the Pew service says.
Kickstarter, recently reincorporated as a public benefit corporation, is one of two larger-scale and broad-based crowdfunding platforms, but it is currently the only major one with a distinct offering for journalism projects. The other, Indiegogo, launched in 2008, offers categories for film, photography, transmedia and video/Web projects – but does not have a specific journalism genre.
An analysis of Kickstarter, then, while not completely exhaustive of all possible journalism-related crowdfunding, seemed an appropriate way to gauge the status and dynamics of this emerging arena.
Researchers analyzed publicly available data for the 2,975 proposed projects in Kickstarter’s Journalism category between April 28 2009 and September 15 2015, with an in-depth examination of the 658 journalism projects that received full – or more than full – funding.4 The 658 funded projects were manually coded for a number of specific elements not in the publicly available data, including who proposed them, what specific types of journalistic endeavors were being presented to potential backers, the geographical orientation and whether a project was a new initiative or an expansion of ongoing work.
The Pew Research finds even as the Journalism category on Kickstarter has grown, it remains one of the smallest of the other 14 categories on a number of levels. To compare the various funding categories on Kickstarter, researchers needed to rely on data through Aug. 31, 2015 (rather than Sept. 15 as the rest of the report does), because this was the last day that data across all categories were captured.
As digital advances spread and the world becomes more globalized and interconnected, crowdfunded journalism is expected to emerge as a major voice symbolizing freedom of expression, democracy and transparency.
Sometimes, crowdfinancing may seem a kind of disruption to traditional way of rolling out new visions, businesses or creative ideas. But it holds equal appeal for both the aspirants of new ventures and the financing individuals and companies. The Internet has made it easy and equal for all aspirants to pitch or present their ideas for a project that can reach across borders and societies. Those whose ideas click get support.
As of now, the crowdfunding through the web is opening up new possibilities for those who do not have the capital to invest but are brimming with good ideas, particularly fresh graduates, innovators, and entreprneurs.
Crowdfunding from a diversity of mainstream participants will also help communities feeling marginalized as it will facilitate voices through financing of the media, research, books and cultural projects. The new forms of the digital media including through crowdfunded projects may alter the news and cultural landscapes. The exchange of ideas is likely to take place at a much faster pace than before and over much larger geographic areas. At the same time, crowdfunding may be the vehicle for communities to express their views and socio-economic development priorities as they see them at the grassroots level.
