Enter World: exploring mediated cultures

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

I’m a huge fan of CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) and have rallied a group in Braddock to join the Dillner Family Farms two years in a row. That same ethic of grassroots support is popping up in the information field with a prime example being Firedoglake’s call to fund investigative blogger Marcy Wheeler.

The phenomenal initial success collecting individual donations, with a goal of reaching $150,000 to fund three full time positions, is being spread through Tweets. The amount raised went up over $200 in the few minutes since I started writing this post.

Last year I wrote about Spot.us starting a community funded reporting site that is now active. The difference between a site devoted to funding journalism and an online news site asking for funding for an existing investigative reporter is that the people donating to Spot.us will be motivated by funding reporting and may want to spread around the funds they can donate, while the Firedoglake readers are already familiar with the reporter and have been benefiting from free reporting up to this call for help.

Compare over $19,000 in one day of donations at Firedoglake to most articles having a few hundred raised on Spot.us. There is also a huge difference in the amount being asked for—on Spot.us the total needed seems to range from a couple hundred to a couple thousand and is not meant to support three full-time positions. The goals are different, the environments are different—but the reader support is a binding thread and something that holds promise for the future of media.