Crowdfunding in News Media
In the recent past there has been an emerging development in the news media segment. The digital age forced traditional newspapers to look for new ways of keeping readers, as the number of print version subscribers dropped, and, of course, also for new ways of funding, because many have been putting their articles online for free, probably to be able to compete against each other. Now I have seen different ways they are trying to cope with that issue. For example, Die Welt puts advertisment videos into their articles, Süddeutsche lets you read up to 10 articles a month before restricting the access and asking you to subscribe, taz promises to keep open access but asks you for donations all the time. While some of them are still struggling to get enough funds to furthermore guarantee good quality journalism, plenty of new media formats have been coming up just or mainly being funded by their readers.
In his interview with Noam Chomsky, Seung-yoon Lee, himself co-founder of the crowdfunded news website Byline, talked with him about some of the problems and opportunities of news media nowadays. While Chomsky is very critical of advertising and independence in the press, he thinks crowdfunding might add to the diversity and range of media and therefore improve the general quality in the media landscape. Now if I think of crowdfunded media I have some particular German formats in mind which I really think are worth a closer look.
To start with, there is BILDblog, a blog dedicated to have a critical look on how the German press — especially the Bild (biggest German tabloid) — can be incorrect, inaccurate, delusive, manipulative, contradictory, you name it. The authors behind it want to show how German news knowingly spread misinformation or unknowingly do so because of a system based on speed, attention and low costs.
Then there is mimikama, whose authors fight against fraud and abuse in the internet as well as hoaxes and fakes. They investigate information and rumours being disseminated on social media to check them for their validity. An awful lot of times I came across suspicious facebook posts and thought there must be something wrong with them, and many times I could find a corresponding article on mimikama telling me how they found out something about it was right or wrong.
I also like Jung & Naiv, a format mostly working with Youtube. The main person behind it is Thilo Jung, who visits the Federal Press Conference — a 3-times-a-week conference in which journalists usually meet spokespersons of the ministries — regularly and asks probing, sometimes annoying questions, often resulting in spokespersons not being able to answer properly and obviously feeling uncomfortable. By doing so and putting montages on Youtube he has become more and more popular, especially to young people. Also the press conference is now watched by way more people than ever since, not only because it is now online available thanks to him and his crew, but even more because of him asking relevant questions hardly to be answered by the spokespersons.
These examples of crowdsourced media have in common that they depend on the funding and other support of their subscribers, that they are specialised on some sort of coverage, and that they all base on a more or less healthy portion of scepticism towards other kinds of news media. All of them have become quite popular in the last years, which indicates that people have been distrusting media and looking for more sceptical and independent approaches. I personally really like all of the introduced formats as they give me the feeling of being able to see through e.g. manipulation by newspapers, hoaxes and rumours, or the government, but of course that is only partially the case. As trustworthy as a medium might look like: only because it is crowdfunded and hence “independent” does not mean it cannot be manipulative.
The Compact Magazin by Jürgen Elsässer, part of the new German right-wing movement, for example has similar stats as the examples mentioned before: claims to be mostly crowdfunded, is sceptical towards politics and traditional media, has a growing number of subscribers. Furthermore it is anti-american, anti-imigration, anti-islamic and so forth. A former owner of the magazine said it radicalised in the last years, now publicising nationalistic and even racist views.
So only because something is crowdfunded does not mean that it is not manipulative or able to change over the years. Also anybody could write anything; if you just find people who believe and support you, you may be funded and can go on writing. Crowdfunding news may be a good opportunity for additional news media not to be completely dependent on advertisement and big investors, but it is not a guarantee for good journalism. So I guess we have to stay sceptical even towards scepticism itself.
