Crowdfunding and Crowdsourcing in Journalism

Andrea Hunter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000367898
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Entrepreneurship
• Index: Business

This book offers an in-depth exploration of crowdfunding and crowdsourcing in journalism today, and examinestheir impactson the broader media landscape.

Crowdfunding and Crowdsourcing in Journalism looks at how these practices disrupt traditional journalism models, including shifting journalistic norms, professional identity, and the ethical issues at play when journalists turn to social media and the Internet to solicit widespread support. While there is often a lot of hype and hope invested in these practices, this book takes a critical look at the labour involved in crowdsourcing journalism practices, and the evolving relationship between audiences and journalists, including issues of civility in online spaces. The author draws on in-depth interviews with journalists in Canada and the United States, as well as examples from the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, and Australia, to provide a comprehensive study of increasingly important journalist practices.

The book is a valuable resource for academics, researchers, and journalists who are interested in political economy, journalism studies, and labour studies.

1 Change and continuity

Over five weeks during the spring of 2013, two Dutch journalists, Rob Wijnberg and Ernst Pfauth, raised just over $1.7 million (USD) through crowdfunding. Their goal was to start an independent online journalism platform called De Correspondent, which would offer something different from mainstream media. As Pfauth put it, De Correspondent is a place where readers can find “background, analysis, investigative reporting, and the kinds of stories that tend to escape the radar of mainstream media because they do not conform to what is normally understood to be ‘news’” (Pfauth, 2013, para 1). Almost 19,000 Dutch people donated money, at least $80 each, to make it happen. That same year, across the Atlantic Ocean, in Toronto, Canada, freelance journalist Naheed Mustafa crowdfunded just over $15,000 (CAD) to support a reporting trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan. As Mustafa described in her pitch, her goal was to “write and produce several stories about how conflict and war have changed the lives of people in the region” (Mustafa, 2013, para 1). It was a much smaller amount than De Correspondent, but still significant for Mustafa as it allowed her to offset her freelancing costs and do the kind of in-depth reporting she hoped would be much more impactful than what she’d been able to produce before. It would give her the ability to slow down a bit, not worry about quantity, and focus on quality.

[T]o offset the costs for these types of overseas projects, I have to churn out an incredible volume of work. Most of what I produce on these reporting trips is simply for the purpose of paying my way. I end up with very little time to invest in the types of deeper stories that require patient, focused reporting and lots and lots of time – the kind of stories that give readers and listeners a better understanding of the reality in the region.

(Mustafa, 2013, para 15)

These are just two examples of a multitude of both small and large crowdfunding ventures that journalists and would-be journalists have undertaken in recent years. As Pfauth and Mustafa did, many of them are taking this on because they want to offer something different than what they see in legacy media. Through crowdfunding, harnessing the power of the Internet to reach potential donors, they are trying to change the landscape of journalism.

Similarly, crowdsourcing, where journalists appeal to audiences through the Internet for story ideas, sources, and expertise, is also changing how journalism is conducted/produced and what it looks like. For example, in 2017 ProPublica and National Public Radio (NPR) in the United States launched a project they called “lost mothers.” Their aim was to investigate deaths and near-death experiences related to pregnancy and childbirth in the United States. They had the statistics that each year between 700 to 900 women die during pregnancy or due to complications related to childbirth. They also knew that “for each woman who dies, more than 70 nearly die” (Gallardo, 2018, para 1). They also had a few names of some potential sources they’d gathered from maternal health professionals. But although this was a good start, they needed more.

[W]e still didn’t have enough of the human stories we needed for this project. So we set out to find women and families willing to share intimate experiences. To do that, we published a request: Do you know someone who died or nearly died in childbirth? Help us investigate.

(Gallardo, 2018, para 2)

The help came quickly. Within days 2,500 people had responded, which quickly grew to nearly 5,000 responses from all 50 states. In the end, with readers’ help, they were able to tell a harrowing series of stories documenting serious failings in the US maternal health system, including the stories of 134 women who had died during childbirth (NPR, n.d.; ProPublica, n.d.).

This was a large-scale crowdsourcing exercise, but crowdsourcing is also used daily by journalists trying to connect quickly with sources outside their personal connections. In March 2020, for instance, when the Covid-19 pandemic had just started to hit Canada, some universities were making quick decisions to close their campuses, move classes online, and empty out residences. Christopher Curtis, a reporter with the Montreal Gazette, was writing a story on deadline and wanted to speak to students who were being asked to leave their residences. He put out a call on Twitter and within hours had connected with sources that might otherwise have been hard to find, the interviews got done, and the story was out on deadline.

Crowdfunding is sometimes characterized as a form of crowdsourcing, but this book will distinguish between the two: crowdfunding means going to the crowd for financial support, while crowdsourcing involves going to the crowd for help with journalistic content, such as sources, expertise, fact-checking, and even sorting through data. Both are often positioned as empowering for journalists. Crowdfunding gives journalists a chance to create work outside legacy media’s walls, thanks to donors who are willing to help fund new media ventures or support a journalist’s freelance reporting. Crowdsourcing opens up new avenues for storytelling, easy access to a wide array of potential sources and experts. In addition to being empowering for journalists, crowdfunding has also been heralded as a way to create a more “participatory” type of media environment in which the “former audience” (Gillmor, 2004) takes on a more active role. Instead of sitting back and passively consuming journalism, they get to participate in the creation of journalism by financially backing projects they believe in. A recent Pew Research Center report spoke glowingly of the potential of crowdfunding to support “a new niche segment of non-traditional journalism driven in large part by public interest and motivation,” and bring “voice and visibility to efforts that would likely otherwise go unnoticed or unfunded” (Vogt & Mitchell, 2016, para 10). Similarly, crowdsourcing has also been championed as a way to open up journalism, or democratize the media, by involving more people as sources, fact-checkers, and even as part of investigative pieces, including participating in data-driven journalism (Aitamurto, 2016; Bradshaw & Brightwell, 2012; Lowrey & Hou, 2018).

However, beyond this hype and the discourse of opportunity, there are some serious issues at play as crowdfunding and crowdsourcing become more common in journalism. This book explores how traditional journalism models are disrupted by these practices, including labour practices, journalistic norms, professional identity, and the ethical issues that arise when journalists turn to social media and the Internet to solicit widespread support—both for finance and for content. It also examines the evolving relationship between audiences and journalists in crowdfunding and crowdsourcing, including issues of civility in online spaces. Much of the focus is on the labour and ethical implications of crowdfunding, particularly what happens when the imagined “wall” between business and journalism collapses. As journalists and would-be journalists negotiate their relationships with funders, they have to grapple with how much influence funders have, or should have, over the content they produce. As well, not only is crowdfunding very labour-intensive to the point where it is prohibitive for many, it requires a set of entrepreneurial skills that can be at odds with journalists who see themselves as public servants. This can mean a profound shift in professional identity for those who are not already comfortable with marketing or the world of business in general. This book will also address how journalists who crowdfund are negotiating ideas around journalistic norms, such as “fair and balanced” or “objective” approaches to reporting. Although the idea of objectivity in reporting has often been critiqued as either impossible or undesirable (Calcutt & Hammond, 2011; Lowery, 2020; Maras, 2013; Tuchman, 1972; Winston & Winston, 2021), or a misunderstood concept that should not be equated simplistically with neutrality or balance (Rosenteil, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c, 2020d, 2020e, 2020f), it is still a norm that guides much legacy media (Deuze, 2011; Gasher, Skinner, & Lorimer, 2020; Winston & Winston, 2021). Some journalists who crowdfund say they strive to adhere to these ideals, but many others are turning to crowdfunding precisely because they want to create advocacy journalism or what I have called journalism with a “point of view”—journalists who believe they can report accurately and truthfully, while maintaining a distinct position. Although much of the focus of this book will be on journalists and the work they do, this book will also examine the role of donors in crowdfunding, arguing that we should think of what donors do as work, and situate their labour within concepts of the audience commodity (Smythe, 1981).

As with crowdfunding, this book will also consider the labour issues involved in crowdsourcing, the ethical challenges that occur when inviting the “crowd” into the journalistic process, and how this type of participatory journalism affects journalists’ sense of professional identity. Crowdsourcing, by its very nature, forces journalists to be more open and transparent about the work they are doing, a practice that flies in the face of traditional ways of reporting, particularly investigative reporting where journalists are used to keeping story ideas under wraps for fear of being scooped. Like crowdfunding, it can also be very labour-intensive and require active participation on social media, which isn’t always easy to step away from and take a break. Crowdsourcing requires journalists to think about the boundaries they need to set up online and how much of themselves they are willing to put “out there.” The “crowd” is also working in crowdsourcing, contributing their time and energy, whether it’s through an interview or actively sorting through data.

This book draws on interviews with 50 journalists who have crowdfunded and/or participated in other types of crowdsourcing. The interviews were conducted between 2013 and 2020. Most of these journalists work in Canada or the United States, with the exception of one who worked in France. The majority of journalists who participated in these interviews are not identified, as anonymous interviews allowed them to speak openly and honestly about their work without potentially jeopardizing their employment or business.¹ I also draw on crowdfunding campaigns found on crowdfunding-specific platforms such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo, websites of individual media organizations that are crowdfunding as part of their overall business plan, crowdsourcing social media posts on Twitter, and news sites where journalists are reaching out to audiences to crowdsource different material.

The purpose of this book is to map out the complex web of crowdfunding and crowdsourcing models that are currently used in journalism through the use of illustrative examples and best practices that are being developed. But while this book may give some guidance for those interested in crowdfunding and crowdsourcing themselves, it is not built as a how-to. Rather, the goal is to cast a critical eye on practices that are often suffused with powerful pro-entrepreneurial or pro-technological rhetoric that tends to ignore or downplay the realities of labour, ethical issues, and disruptions to professional journalistic norms that need to be examined thoughtfully. While I share the belief with many journalists in this book that crowdfunding and crowdsourcing can be powerful tools that help tell stories that might otherwise go untold, I am also wary of offloading the responsibility of financing journalism onto individual journalists or small journalistic organizations. I am similarly concerned about the labour implications of these practices, including the extra responsibilities put on journalists who feel obliged to add crowdsourcing to their daily work schedule. Finally, I hope this book adds to the conversation already underway about shifting journalistic norms or “boundaries” (Carlson & Lewis, 2015) as journalists and journalism educators consider both the continuities and disruptions these new practices bring to our work. Instead of adopting new practices quickly just because at first glance they seem to offer possibilities that will only make the profession that much better, we need to consider what journalistic norms (if any) should remain foundational, what needs to shift and how we can define the work we do with these new tools. My hope is that this book gives the reader a sense of how journalists who crowdfund and crowdsource are grappling with these ideas.

Book structure

This chapter continues with an overview of how crowdfunding and crowdsourcing have been used in journalism to date, including some of the most prevalent models for these practices that are currently in use. Chapter 2 will focus on labour issues. As mentioned, crowdfunding can be an enormous amount of work. A successful crowdfunding campaign isn’t a “build it and they will come” type of situation, rather it requires sustained outreach and follow-up with donors. This can be so time-consuming on platforms like Kickstarter that one journalist described it as a “second full-time job” ($47,500 USD, Kickstarter). Similarly, crowdsourcing can require building and sustaining relationships with a wide array of people, which can be very time-consuming. As well, both crowdfunding and crowdsourcing require a type of labour that can seem very different for journalists, whether it’s adopting business practices or being transparent about your work. This chapter also considers the work of the “crowd,” and how audiences are implicated in these practices. Chapter 3 examines how the journalistic norms of autonomy and independence are invoked in crowdfunding and crowdsourcing. This includes how journalists interpret these ideas in the context of any responsibility they may feel towards their funders and the people who are helping them crowdsource stories. This chapter also looks at how the journalistic norms of verification and accuracy are translated in crowdsourcing, including how transparency is used when verification becomes impossible. Chapter 4 explores the ways journalists are using crowdfunding and crowdsourcing to report on stories they don’t see in legacy media, or bring a diverse range of sources and ideas into the news-making process. The chapter situates the work of journalists within the sociological theory of structuration, that asks us to think about the larger societal structures we all work and live under, and the agency that individuals may or may not have within these structures. This chapter provides examples of how journalists are trying to open up journalism, either by creating venues for stories that may not find a home in legacy media, or widen the range of sources they use. Finally, Chapter 5’s focus will be on best practices, and it will look at how crowdfunding and crowdsourcing are working to redefine and reinforce the boundaries of journalism as a profession and practice.

Crowdfunding

Since the 2008 recession, jobs in legacy media in North America have become increasingly scarce as journalism organizations struggle to remain financially viable (Grieco, Summida, & Fedeli, 2018; McChesney & Pickard, 2011; Public Policy Forum, 2017). Around the world there are similar stories to tell (Nel, 2010; O’Donnell, Zion, & Sherwood, 2016; Viererbl & Koch, 2019). More recently, the economic shutdown due to Covid-19 has also taken a toll, with some predicting that the impact may be even greater than the 2008 downturn (Silverman, 2020). As journalism organizations lose advertising revenue, we’ve seen some ask their staff to take pay cuts, cancellations of paid internships, as well as a multitude of layoffs and closures (Cox, 2020; Donnelly, 2020; Silverman, 2020). It is within this context of job losses and closures that crowdfunding has been heralded as one way for struggling journalists or would-be journalists to fund their work, either by bolstering their freelance budgets or creating new online platforms for their work (Aitamurto, 2011, 2015; Carvajal, García-Avilés, & González, 2012; Hunter, 2015, 2016; Hunter & Di Bartolomeo, 2018; Jian & Usher, 2014; Porlezza & Splendore, 2016).

Much of the early hype and hope around crowdfunding came from some high-profile cases where journalists were raising far more than they asked for, in some cases by hundreds of thousands of dollars (Hunter, 2015). One of the earliest success stories was Matter—a science and technology magazine that raised $140,000 (USD) on Kickstarter. While ...