Net Funded Journalism
Joshua Ellis, a Las Vegas based writer, journalist, musician, web dude and he of the Grim Meathook Future scenario has been conducting an interesting experiment on his blog Zenarchery.com.
His idea? Net funded journalism. Here’s how he’s going about it. The Trinity test site in Almagordo New Mexico is open to the public for just two days a year. Joshua wanted to write an article about it but was not in a position to fund the trip himself and then attempt to sell the article to a publisher. His solution? Well here it is in his own words.
For your consideration: an experiment. An idea.
The first Saturday in April is one of the two days a year when the Trinity test site in New Mexico is open to the public — the next time is in October. Trinity, if you’re not familiar, is where the first nuclear bomb was detonated in July of 1945.
I want to go to Trinity next Saturday, and write a long essay about it, and the Bomb, and the Manhattan Project.
What I’m asking: my readers to drop me donations via PayPal and BitPass before noon on Friday (since the site is only open on Saturday, and it will take me about twelve hours to drive there). Five bucks, ten bucks,whatever you’re willing to spend. I need a minimum of €410 (€410 ($500)) to make the trip, primarily for gas for my truck; €820 (€820 ($1000)) would be better, mainly to cover emergencies, etc. I’ll be spending some of my own money on this, but I’ll be perfectly honest with you: I don’t have a lot of extra money right now, and I need your help.
What you’re getting in return: a minimum 2500 word essay about Trinity, the Bomb, etc. from an award-winning journalist who’s been writing a newspaper column for a half-decade now (that would be me). A lot of photographs, taken by me (and I’m a fairly decent photographer). Possibly some digital video, if a) they’ll let me take my parents’ DV camera into Trinity and b) there’s anything worth taking digital video of. All of this — the essay, the photos, the video — will be posted on Zenarchery under a Creative Commons by-nc (or Attribution Non-Commercial) license, which means you’re free to republish them or make derivative works so long as you’re not making money off it and you credit me with the original material.
If I don’t reach my minimum goal of €410 (€410 ($500)), all collected monies will be donated to WITNESS, an international human rights organization that provides training and support to local groups to use video in their human rights advocacy campaigns. It’s a respected and well-known organization, and one I urge you to look into anyway. I will also donate whatever’s left after my travel expenses, in case I get more from you than I need. So no matter what, your money’s going to a good place. Not a dollar will go into my pocket.
Why you should do this: Because this is the future of journalism, whether traditional journalists like it or not, and because this is the sort of thing that the Web ought to be about, and because if you know my writing you know you’ll get a damned good story.
Why I’m doing this: Because I turned 28 years old today, and I’m bored of doing things the way I’ve been doing them, and because I want to try something interesting. I’m a good writer, and I want to write about this. It’s one of the most fascinating stories in American — indeed, in human — history.
I’m not the first person to think of such a thing, of course; I believe Chris Allbritton is, with his Back To Iraq website. Chris is a damn fine writer and correspondent, and his work has inspired me to try following — however lightly — in his footsteps.
Well he did it, he raised his €490 (€490 ($600)) in roughly 4 days, I threw €4.08 (€4.08 ($5)) in the pot myself. Why? Well I think this is a clever idea and worthwhile experiment. He’s off on the roadtrip now and you can follow his progress over at zenarchery.com.
I’m looking forward to reading the article but I am also interested in his reflections on the net funded journalism experiment. It’s an idea that has legs and I was running through scenarios in my head yesterday as to how a system like that might evolve. Not regarding the tiresome debate on ‘citizen journalism’ and blogging vs ‘real’ journalism but here is a bona fide example of a technically savvy established journalist bending the web to his will and harnessing it to publish his work and further his career.
This is an experiment of course and no one should be foolish enough to believe one could make a living out of it in this ad hoc ‘tip jar’ format but let the idea rattle around the net for a while and you might get something like these scenarios:
Scenario #1
A cottage industry of net journalists. Writers who have a strong web presence and a traditional media presence presenting their web readers with an article proposal menu. ‘I want to write articles about x,y and z and here are my detailed proposals for each one. How much I need and what you will get for them.’ There are myriad ways this could be implemented and the finished content could also be picked up or sold on to the traditional media after the fact. Don’t talk to me about copyright issues ok, problems are there to be solved that’s what our big brain and the opposable thumbs are for.
An interesting aspect to this is that writers like Joshua who are attempting to build their careers and experiment with new avenues in publishing their work may be helped along by more established writers who command larger web presences and act like an Internet patron pushing people to their site and encouraging them to throw a few coins in the pot. Witness Internet Jesus and Love Swami Warren Ellis do exactly that in Joshua Ellis’ (no relation) case. Warren has a very active presence on the net and his website is visited by hundreds of thousands of vistors each month. An established writer with a loyal following who endorses you to their fans and pushes traffic to your site could act in much the same way a recommendation from a published writer to an editor might get you a writing gig or to the top of a slush pile.
A one line recommendation from Warren Ellis going out on his Bad Signal mailing list (9500+ readers) or his website (80-100,000+ hits per month) will send a lot of eyeballs to your site and if what you’re proposing catches their attention or brings you a handful of new readers then all the better. According to the statistics Joshua published on his site roughly 31 people donated to the pot. That seems like a relatively small amount to me but if it’s accurate then it appears only a handful of reader’s donations are necessary to make a modest project viable.
Scenario #2
Now remember I am just spitballing here. A loosely associated group of writers publishing under some kind of unified web presence similar to Mperia or with some form of social networking Web 2.0 bollocks overlaid on top of it. Mperia a venture which Joshua Ellis is also involved in. Seeing a pattern here? Look out for this guy.
Why is this different from a large news organisation? Well essentially it’s not and in time may grow to resemble a traditional media outlet. Media however is going niche. Really, really niche. Podcasting, digital tv, iTunes, bittorrent and almost every new buzzword laden technology hitting the media market today the universal feature they all offer users is the ability to filter out the extraneous bumpf they no longer want to see or hear and just give them their niche. Journalism has always been niche, just ask the editor of Van Drivers Monthly or The Racing Post. Traditional contract publishing thrives on niche markets, has done for decades.
There’s a US author somewhere in rural Ireland writing a fantasy novel about cat wizards because her readers demanded she finish her trilogy after the publisher pulled out at book number two. No market for cat wizards they said. So the author shelved her Cat book for a few years. But the internet loves cats and sure enough technology caught up and she devised a net funded novel. She opened the pot and once the minimum target for publishing is reached she finishes the book, prints up copies for the readers who donated via Lulu POD (publishing on demand) and collects her royalties. There is another woman somewhere in the US who now has a book deal because she published her book on her Livejournal blog in sections. She interested a publisher from the buzz it created and now she has a book contract.
These are merely a couple of instances of anecdotal evidence and as individual examples they are neither sustainable nor scalable. I am not evangelising the shiny new internet future here I am simply pointing out that routes to publishing and the ability of the individual to affect those routes and revenue streams are changing, evolving and multiplying.
Net funded journalism? You would have been laughed out of the newsroom with an idea like that a few years ago and receive loud guffaws today in many more. But you know what there’s a guy in Almagordo New Mexico right now with five of my dollars in his pocket that says different. That’s an investment, an investment in The Future.
So Godspeed Joshua, go bring us back a piece of the future from the stories of the past.
Update: My Google Fu on the Livejournal book deal was weak and my memory somewhat inaccurate but lo and behold BoingBoing came to the rescue today with a follow up post. The actual story is long and involved but can be read here. In another strange coincidence Warren Ellis had a hand in publicising this author as well. He does get around and I think this proves my web patron point.
From the authors website:
Warren decided he’d give sales a shot in the arm by mentioning it on his (now abandoned) site DiePunyHumans. To say that I was intensely grateful, and that I would cheerfully give him my firstborn child, and would throw rose petals at his feet for the rest of his days , is still to understate the depths of my gratitude for his support. Thanks in no small part to his internet assistance, the first edition of 4&20bb went on to stay on the Amazon.com’s horror bestseller list for the next couple of weeks.