How much would you pay for investigative reporting in Somerville?
By adamg - Wed, 04/08/2009 - 8:26am.
Barry Rafkind reports that Somerville Voices is looking at bringing "crowd funding" to the city to fund in-depth reporting of the sort he's not seeing in the Somerville Journal or Somerville News.
The basic idea would be to set up a site where investigative journos would post story ideas and then interesting residents could donate money to fund their work. It'd be based on a San Francisco effort called Spot.Us.
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Some weaknesses of that:
1. How do you fund important investigations that at first glance readers might not find interesting?
2. Won't savvy people trying to pay the bills be incentived to pitch ideas that generate funds (i.e., the investigative equivalent of running photos of kittens and puppies), such as being very sensational and teasing people with what they want to hear, rather than those that might be most important and objective? (Actually, this is already done to various degrees at different papers, but respected papers don't do *only* this.)
3. Way to tip off your targets.
There are more...
Also...
...it puts enormous pressure on the journalists to produce a story that satisfies the donors. Eventually you'll have someone whose life, career, and/or reputation was destroyed because a journalist cut a few investigative corners or ignored contrary information in order to make the story.
The spot.us model
I'm not so sure that you'll have people cutting corners in order to satisfy donors in this model. The way I understand how spot.us is constructed, the money for the stories has to be raised before the topic is explored. You are, in effect, funding the investigation - not its publication.
There are also strict limits on the amount any one person or entity can donate - so you're protected a little from a backlash or the possibility that people will in effect buy a reporter. (OK OK, a group of individuals... yada yada yada... it's an imperfect model.)
The idea theft problem is an difficult one. But where Spot.US pitches seem to have found a niche is in those stories that are too small or local for a regional newspaper. Could one of the Somerville papers swoop in and swipe an idea (or a local weekly in any community)? Sure. But will they have the resources to set aside to investigate something without additional funding like spot.us provides? Less clear. Not sure if anyone in SF has had an issue with it.
There are some definite holes in the model - but it's an interesting way to raise a little cash and generate work that might not be done otherwise. Whether it works all over or can succeed in Somerville? That one... I'd have no way to guess. But there's one sure way to find out. Try it.
more problems...
However, if you don't deliver the story the donors wanted to fund, your chances of getting their support the next time around diminish.
Journalists would be put in the position of playing the grantmaking game, dressing up investigation/story proposals in a way that is attractive to potential donors. "Sexy" investigative topics will get the funding, while bread-and-butter corruption, unglamorous-but-significant stories about bureaucratic ineptitude, etc., will get the short shrift...even more so than now. No doubt the donors political leanings would influence the agenda as well.
Piecemeal funding of investigative journalism may be thinking out of the box, but this is a potentially dangerous way to develop the news.
Compare
The idea that journalistic integrity will go out the window is a bit far-fetched. Compare to scientific granting, a person puts out an idea that they want funded. An agency (in the case of the journalist, that would be the consumers) funds the project and expects to receive a progress report of how the research goes to continue the funding. The outcome of the research is published for everyone to read and vette. Consumers want the truth, if that's not what they get, then they'll definitely take their money elsewhere.
If anything this would introduce MORE integrity by directly linking the consumer to the paycheck. Right now, the paycheck is given by everyone BUT the consumers: advertisers, media moguls, politicians, etc. Who holds current journalists to the truth and not some slanted crap that makes advertisers happy? Nobody, and that's why we're inundated with Lifestyle garbage, over-inflated Real Estate sections, and Fox News.
Tipping off competitors, too
When I first heard about the Spot.Us idea, I asked somebody I know who's actually done freelance reporting and writing. She said she'd never do it because what would stop somebody from taking and running with any ideas she posted?
Still, let a thousand flowers bloom and all that. I have no doubt there are some interesting things to investigate in Somerville and nearby towns.
And in other Somerville media news
Somerville now has its very own lifestyles magazine.
What I get
No respect. No respect at all, I tell ya.