Type of site | Crowdfunding / Journalism |
---|---|
Created by | Dan Fletcher, Dmitri Cherniak and Adrian Sanders [1] |
URL | beaconreader.com |
Commercial | Yes |
Current status | offline |
Beacon or Beacon Reader was an independent web platform to fund journalism projects founded in 2013. It was based in Oakland, California. Hundreds of journalists used the platform to finance their writing and investigations. The organisers worked with newspaper publications to promote the projects, and to help the stories produced reach a wider audience. Beacon announced in an email on October 4, 2016 that they are no longer offering services for journalists or backers, and that on September 12, 2016 all active subscriptions were cancelled and no further contributions could be made.
As of 2015, over US$1,000,000 was raised via 20,000 donors to fund journalism. The site differed from existing models of funding journalism with donations, such as National Public Radio and Kickstarter by focusing on the journalist, providing publishing support, vetting and audience participation in story development. Failure for individual writers is high, however popular news outlets, e.g. The Huffington Post and The Texas Tribune, have been more successful in raising funds. [1]
The partnership between Beacon and The Huffington Post was criticised for allowing a for-profit corporation seek and accept funding for donations that are usually reserved for non-profit entities. The fear is that it may be easier to crowdfund journalist salaries than expending corporate profits. [2]
The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) is an American nonprofit investigative journalism organization whose stated mission is "to reveal abuses of power, corruption and dereliction of duty by powerful public and private institutions in order to cause them to operate with honesty, integrity, accountability and to put the public interest first." With over 50 staff members, the CPI is one of the largest nonprofit investigative centers in America. It won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.
Journalistic objectivity is a considerable notion within the discussion of journalistic professionalism. Journalistic objectivity may refer to fairness, disinterestedness, factuality, and nonpartisanship, but most often encompasses all of these qualities. First evolving as a practice in the 18th century, a number of critiques and alternatives to the notion have emerged since, fuelling ongoing and dynamic discourse surrounding the ideal of objectivity in journalism.
Paul Salopek(born February 9, 1962 in Barstow, California) is a journalist and writer from the United States. He is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and was raised in central Mexico. Salopek has reported globally for the Chicago Tribune, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, National Geographic Magazine and many other publications. In January 2013, Salopek embarked on the "Out of Eden Walk", originally projected to be a seven-year walk along one of the routes taken by early humans to migrate out of Africa, a transcontinental foot journey that was planned to cover more than 20,000 miles funded by the National Geographic Society, the Knight Foundation and the Abundance Foundation.
The Tyee is an independent online daily news source primarily based in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was founded in November 2003 as an alternative to corporate media.
Spot.Us was a non-profit organization designed to bring citizens, journalists, and news publishers together in an online marketplace based on crowdsourcing and crowdfunding methods and principles. It was founded in 2008 by David Cohn, who received a $340,000 grant from the Knight Foundation to pursue his idea. In November 2011 it was bought by American Public Media. They hosted the site for a time, but were unable to maintain it. It was retired February 2015.
The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit media organization headquartered in Austin, Texas. It aims to promote civic engagement through original, explanatory journalism and public events.
CrowdRise is a for-profit crowdfunding platform that raises charitable donations. CrowdRise was founded by Edward Norton, Shauna Robertson, and the founders of Moosejaw, Robert and Jeffrey Wolfe. CrowdRise was acquired in 2017 by GoFundMe.
GoFundMe is an American for-profit crowdfunding platform that allows people to raise money for events ranging from life events such as celebrations and graduations to challenging circumstances like accidents and illnesses. From 2010 to the beginning of 2020, over $9 billion has been raised on the platform, with contributions from over 120 million donors.
YouCaring was a crowdfunding website for personal, medical, and charitable causes. The company was a Certified B corporation based in San Francisco, California. YouCaring did not take a percentage of funds raised on its site, or charge those raising funds a fee. The company relied on voluntary donations from donors to fund operations. YouCaring was acquired by GoFundMe in 2018.
Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) is a non-profit organization founded in 2012 to fund and support free speech and freedom of the press. The organization originally managed crowd-funding campaigns for independent journalistic organizations, but now pursues technical projects to support journalists' digital security and conducts legal advocacy for journalists.
Founded in 2012, Tilt was a crowdfunding company that allowed for groups and communities to collect, fundraise, or pool money online. James Beshara and Khaled Hussein launched the platform under the name Crowdtilt in February 2012 out of Y Combinator.
Invesdor is an equity-based crowdfunding platform based in Helsinki, Finland. The company was founded in May 2012. Invesdor has been reported as being the first equity-based crowdfunding service in Northern Europe. It operates as a matching service between investors and companies.
Garnering funds in the form of donations has always been a major focus for university leaders. These donations are usually found in the form of large annual gifts by alumni and friends of universities, along with funding from government entities for public universities. More recently, universities have been taking steps to modernize their giving structure through the use of crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is an online tool utilizing peer-to-peer relationships to help gain funds for different aspects of university culture.
De Correspondent is a Dutch news website based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. It was launched on 30 September 2013 after raising more than €1 million in a crowdfunding campaign in eight days. The website distinguishes itself by rejecting the daily news cycle and focusing on in-depth and chronological coverage on a topical basis, led by individual correspondents who each focus on specific topics. Sometimes it publishes English versions of its articles.
Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP) is a free, non-profit news website based in Hong Kong. It was co-founded in 2015 by Tom Grundy, who believed that the territory's press freedom was in decline, to provide an alternative to the dominant English-language news source, the South China Morning Post, and to cover the pro-democracy movement.
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, in modern times typically via the Internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over US$34 billion were raised worldwide by crowdfunding.
Crowdfunded journalism is journalism that is financially sourced by the collection of donations from the general public. Typically, journalists rely on micropayments from ordinary people to finance their reporting. Crowdfunding is typically related to crowdsourcing, because the source of funding is often from a larger third-part group or crowd. The audience can support journalism projects by donating sums of money, or other resources, through popular crowdfunding websites such as GoFundMe and Kickstarter.
WikiTribune was a news wiki where volunteers wrote and curated articles about widely publicised news by proof-reading, fact-checking, suggesting possible changes, and adding sources from other, usually long established outlets. Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, announced the site in April 2017 as a for-profit site, not affiliated with Wikipedia or its support organisation, the Wikimedia Foundation. Until October 2018, WikiTribune employed journalists with established backgrounds in the profession who researched, syndicated, and reported news.
Citizen Matters is an independent news media outlet with a focus on cities and citizens by reporting on critical issues, ideas and solutions to India’s urban issues. Citizen Matters is published by Oorvani Foundation, a Bangalore-registered trust setup in 2013 to develop and promote journalism on governance, citizenship and society in India at the city, state and national levels.
Republik is a Swiss online news magazine launched in 2018. Funded primarily by its readers, the magazine emphasizes investigative journalism, reader-journalist interaction, and long format journalism. The magazine editors and founders have also created Project R, an effort to promote the long-term sustainability of high quality journalism in Switzerland.