I’m not asking if you would pay for press coverage as a business if it were possible. I’m asking if you would ever do it as an individual, when you think there’s something that’s been under-reported or even downright unreported to date and you want to see that situation changed. If you were looking for a story to be told that you consider to be missing from the news coverage already out there, would you be inclined to take out your wallet, and maybe even rally your friends, family and peers to do the same in order to be able to pay a reporter to do the fieldwork on your behalf?
Because that’s exactly what Global For Me’s is trying to do.
Here’s how it works: you suggest a story to be investigated on the GFM website, and donate personally or together with others until you have the necessary funds to effectively have the company find and hire a journalist for you to—and I’m quoting from the website here—”go to briefings, press conferences, request interviews or door stop reluctant interviewees on your behalf.” Examples given on the homepage include politicians and local authorities but also “celebrities” and “anybody else”. In my opinion, that sounds more like hiring a private detective, but maybe I’m missing something here.
Could this model ever work?
In theory, it doesn’t sound all that bad. Communities are formed around a given topic and its members, aided by peer pressure and the use of social networking services, jointly decide what exactly should be investigated, a reporter does his or her job and gets paid the standard rate for it, Global For Me keeps a commission and the audience gets the news and/or answers to certain questions it was longing for delivered right at their virtual doorsteps. Everyone wins, right?
In practice though, I’m not convinced it will work. The service would have to receive a heap of traction before the model gets even remotely viable enough for the journalists who would take on work through the service as well as for Global For Me. I’m also inclined to believe people would fund certain investigations to have a reporter discover what they want to see discovered, and that more often than not the end result will not live up to their expectations. And since there’s isn’t a publisher / editor to act as gatekeeper, who would they turn to to complain about possible bias or sloppy reporting? And looking at it from a different perspective, who’s to say freelance journalists – even if unvoluntarily – at some point wouldn’t start reporting stories the way the original commissioners (and the ones paying the bill) would want to see them reported?
It’s worth noting that there are other organizations providing this type of service, but like Spot.us – perhaps the most familiar example of an online marketplace for community-funded reporting – they are non-profits and are not looking to commercialize the whole thing like GFM does.
So let’s go back to the original question: would you consider paying a reporter to report a story on your behalf, and why (not)?
This is a great idea! Someone should write an article on it.
I think most of the issues we SHOULD care about wouldn’t get paid support. We’re poor enough as it is right now, the last thing I need it another bill just to find out what my local politicians are doing.
We do pay for free news, it is called the cable bill.
Unless, I am the only stupid person in the world to pay for TV channels on cable.
new idea doesn’t mean good idea.
I don’t think is a great idea. I wouldn’t pay for my story to get published unless its like do or die situation for me.
If my cause/news is worthy enough then with the power of today’s social media my story can reach millions with paying a penny for it.
@ShangyBaba; Reading is Fundamental.
As the posting stated very clearly up front, the service is not about PR about you/your cause, but about reporting on news *you’re* interested in,
Fun concept, but the time (& the effort) to bring a story to press could take days – and in some cases – weeks. Readers want their news within minutes, not hours (just ask the struggling newspapers), or in this case several days.
No, it doesn’t sound bad at all. As communication channels becomes more and more democratized, the choir of biased and redundant information will grow, making us all more inclined to seek out qualified sources. But pay cash for it…? Am I not just supposed to pay with my attention – or is that no good anymore?
And I still think good stories waiting to happen will/should happen solely for the sake of bringing new information into the loop – not just for few bucks.
Martin, alas, your attention isn’t worth enough to pay for a journalist to do real coverage, and especially not at a local level. News coverage is like anything else – you get exactly what you are willing to pay for. Since advertisers won’t pay the difference anymore, then readers will simply have to live with less. (Yes, I know that OSS is free and supported by a community but its *definitely not* free as in beer.
Only if the said journalist would promise not to write any stories about Twitter.
I don’t mean to be hard on spot.us, They only took a small investment, but still- I think its a questionable model.
http://spot.us/news_items – I believe this to be the full extent of that sites pitches. 2 pages of results since october.
Now, don’t get me wrong- A few of their pitches have made it to “fully funded” (don’t know if this means people actually forked over the cash) but the founder cant be making a living with those numbers.
Its a interesting idea and platform, but it also appears to not be profitable (or catching on)
@Dan
The current search page has two pages of results of active pitches at this moment. We have had other pitches which either turned into stories or were taken down because they were unsuccessful. So what you are seeing on the news_results page isn’t EVERYTHING – just what we are working on at this moment.
And yes – the amount of money and resources we have are relatively small. Only two people working on it full time.
Also there is something to be said about the site not being profitable. It is a nonprofit. We are able to survive at the moment.
i don’t think there is enough twitter coverage….i’ll throw in $10…who’s with me??
I’m going to pay them to look into TC’s undying love of Twitter and support of the carbon credit scam.
But seriously, as Martin said
“No, it doesn’t sound bad at all. As communication channels becomes more and more democratized, the choir of biased and redundant information will grow, making us all more inclined to seek out qualified sources.”
I think such a thing will not make us more inclined to seek out qualified sources. The more everyone goes in one direction, the more likely others will just fall in line. Think ‘Plato’s Cave’
people will never pay for news at this level. this is a pretty good article that sums up the economics of the practice:
http://qzip.in/of
It is possible, but I think this goes too far. I mean i don’t need a private investigator or anyone to go and find me a news i like. Most of the news i like and read are on the web. It is just matter of sorting and selecting the ones i like. The problem with web news is basically the organization of news, not that there is less news. It just needs better organization and ordering so the whole news topic makes sense to people.
Plus i don’t think I will ever pay for any news over the web. Competition between news agencies are huge and I don’t think news will be charged any time soon. If it does, it will be pretty shocking to me. News agencies should sell ads, instead of charging people. I don’t think wallstreet journal and other magazines that charge people are doing very well. As long as these news companies write an article that automatically makes me a millionaire or sells specific instructions that makes me a millionaire I wouldn’t pay a dollar to read any news.
James, you don’t seem to get it. The news you are used to getting? It’s all going away. When the newspapers collapse, the AP goes with them. Reuters and Bloomberg have no real incentive to cover state and national news since its a loss leader for them outside their finance holes. That leaves you with state-sponsored news like AFP and the BBC – which may be where we are sponsored. If you think you have trouble sorting news now, wait a year or so — you might not have that problem anymore and you might not be happy about how the problem was solved.
Jim, I don’t think news is going away at all. I hardly think newspapers will totally disappear and we end up with state-sponsored news. Blog world will still be there, which is same as news. Some of the big news companies like NYTimes, wash post and others will have serious money problems, but they will shrink and adept and still produce news. If they have like 5,000 writers now, they can go to 100-200 writers and still function. Trust me news isn’t going anywhere. They will change according to the revenue they generate if they are smart enough to run ads on their websites. I think most of them are running now. They will still bring in revenues by ads just like google, but the scale of the newspaper will shrink and come back. Currently we are in a tough economic environment that is hurting the newspapers even more. It will pick up. We won’t be in the dark ages for sure.
sounds a bit like what sellaband have done for music and bands – which i really like! my thoughts here – http://platform...ing-journalism/
This idea is already prevalent in the institutional investment community. Hedge funds and mutual funds pay researchers and “expert networks” big $$$ to essentially do the same thing.
Using this as a model, the key to the success is the quality of the reporters in the pool and your ability to choose who will report your story. From one’s experience, you may know a particular industry or subject extremely well, but lack the time or knowledge to chase down emerging details or trends. A generalist would not be able to tell you something you don’t already know — but someone with equal or more experience on a subject may be able to quickly report on details that would be valuable to extending your knowledge.
Bottom line: very likely that this turns into something like ChaCha (failed personal search service) due to lack of quality reporters.
Here are nine ways newspapers can survive. http://bit.ly/2Smfr
Here are ten ways to say waste of my time. http://bit.ly/3bSd3B
In regards to the Global For Me organization, It does sound a bit shady, like hiring a private detective. But with Spot.us, the reporters are pitching the stories and everyone else votes on them with their funding.
News is something which should be brought to you and which covers a wide range of topics.
One should get an idea of the world around him or her. User may chose to go into the details of whatever interests him. I do not think it is a good idea
Sounds like Faux News… if you have a corporation doing the fund raising.
Igor: First thought I had!
Anyway, I doubt this kind of thing would get much traction. I mean, on the billion sites on the internet, there’s someone writing something about what someone would want to read.
This is like content search system.But if google then why be take out our Wallet?
I have a hard time to see how this formof news differs from the one we allready get from lobying. To me this service bring the power of loby to our level which on itself is not bad.
interesting, but the best articles I read in the papers are on topics that I never would have even known about if the journalists hadn’t uncovered them
Thanks for mentioning Spot.Us. As I say – we are an experiment. We are having some success so far. We’ve funded 23 stories since our launch in November (almost one story a week).
But we have lots to learn and figure out still – in fact, I was just going to publish our “State of the Spot” blog post later today which will look at what we’ve done since our launch 6 months ago and since the project was announced almost a year ago.
twitter would do this job neatly. Getting consolidated news already…I wouldn’t pay anyone to get any news to me…:P
~ marvin
http://yousuggest.us
no
I read articles that interest me. I don’t know what I want to read until I see it. I’m interested in a wide variety of topics. It would cost too much to have a reporter for each topic
I have subscriptions to WSJ.com and The Economist, Plus a Sirius subscription for Bloomberg and Direct TV for Sports and other information. Plus I donate to NPR. So no, I am not going to aggregate all this in one place and pay another premium for it.
i don’t think so. i would expect the editor to do a mix and would trust that judgment. that is what i do with media of my choise. i’m afraid having a sponsor of certain type of news calls for trouble; the one who pays would feel that he could shape the content.
i think there are not that many underreported stories. i’ve read about subprimes in, i think, Le Monde diplomatique, or Courries de …something Parisian and leftist, good three years ago.
Thank for all the comments……that’s a story in itself.
What we are trying to do at Global for me is to see if all you want is another one of the ‘billion’ of the same sites, or if something more unique ‘for you’ would fly
You all pay for something, sometimes – might have even bought newspapers once – so it’s not impossible to think you might once or twice contribute to interesting work.
The journalists we use are all pros, they’ve got to eat and if we always rely on advertising to pay the bills, then that will eventually command what we read…don’t you want to have some control. You, I mean, not massive corporations?
I thought that is the freedom the web gives us, not the other way round, where somebody else decides what’s news?
I think Kincaid’s take and your own are both valid. I like what Spot.us (never heard of them) is doing too, by focusing so narrowly on Bay Area related content first (the non-profit status is a differentiator).
I’m guessing the complete disruption of the media/ news industry b/c of hyper-connectivity will just make things more efficient. Lots of carnage on the way followed by lots of iterations on ways to replace it. So I hope all the companies filling the void are pushing releases bimonthly, getting feedback and testing.
In the end, The Borg is operated for free (not sure about bias
Keep going.
P.S. Your site hurts my eyes. Your logo looks like Drupal’s. And, when I go to a news site, I want to see news, not a sign-up pitch.
This is a fabulous idea, but it has been done. It is called newspapers or should I say ‘quality newspapers’. I pay for news that I value .. turns out there are reporters in those that I value, but the real value lies in knowing those news sources will always be there for me.
@Colin
This is the problem that newspapers face, however – a lack of understanding the business model.
Actually – you have probably never really paid for reporting. The money you spend subscribing to a newspaper doesn’t even cover the cost of deliver. Subscriptions have always been a loss leader.
The way newspapers made money was advertising. Always has been.
That model has fallen apart because content has been disaggregated online. That means advertising won’t pay for reporters.
But – if you lower the cost of delivery then the money collected should go directly to reporting. It is still a squeeze – but potentially covers the cost of reporting – hence GlobalFM and Spot.Us.
@digidave hmmm we might be in violent agreement. The ad model is broken, and I was just ranting about that earlier actually here
http://www.read...ad_blocking.php
I pay for valued interpretation of information, not ad based news. Everyone rants about the demise of newspapers ..not so. Demise of ad basd newspapers. Raw information as you suggest is essentially free.
I think you are right – we are in violent agreement. Keep on keeping on!
Part of why I started Spot.Us was to see if there was a way to fund real enterprise reporting without adverts.
For comparison, Consumer Reports is a for-profit operation. The similarities and differences are interesting to look at from the perspective of the various actors. Spot.us looks like an iteration on craigslist.org in many ways, and that’s a good thing.
Don’t I do that when I buy a newspaper which favours the type of stories that I like to read?
My issue is that the majority of the public only knows about a story once it has been broken by a journo in the first place.
Sure, there is an enlightened few, but the types of leads they would provide would surely be a bit general – suggesting to “investigate curruption in Washington” isn’t going to work.
One other point that should be noted is that the BIG stories that are broken usually take weeks/months to investigate. Sometimes they are squashed by legal pressure etc. I guess another question is “are you willing to pay a journo enough to live for a few months, without the guarantee of a story ever seeing the light of day?”
@Mungo .. there is an essential point in what you say First off, while news gets broken in many ways, which one do you trust. If there were no TV or Newspaper journalism, would you you be satisdied to live of news only on Twitter?
Second is context. News breaking is a set of facts. Then there is the framework surrounding the news item. For example “X number of civilians are killed in Sri Lanka bombing”. Is that all you want to know? That is all you will get from Twitter.
“News is old things happening to new people.” – Malcolm Muggeridge
Probably to put it in another way, “new news is old news happening to new people.” I’m not sure we’d actually be able to highlight issues that hadn’t already been highlighted. Most of us probably won’t be aware of a piece of news until it’s broken by existing news journalists. I think that’s what news journalists should be providing as well – news that matters to people, and they are probably the ones who know best what the public needs to know.
It’s not a bad idea though, if the intention of it is to have the man on the street have a space to voice his opinions, but we probably already have newspaper forums to do that.
One other point I’d like to raise is that journalists in the GRN/GFM network are also suggesting story ideas…issues that they feel need further coverage or that won’t ever see the light of day within traditional media as advertising won’t pay for it.
This way we hope to push the flow of information forward….
As digidave says, it’s an experiment and I believe an important one at that. The combination of pro reporters and UGC could be explosive both on the global but also local stage.
One other point I’d like to raise is that journalists in the GRN/GFM network are also suggesting story ideas…issues that they feel need further coverage or that won’t ever see the light of day within traditional media as advertising won’t pay for it.
This way we hope to push the flow of information forward….
As digidave says, it’s an experiment and I believe an important one at that. The combination of pro reporters and UGC could be explosive both on the global but also local stage.
OH! You’re my new favorite blogger fyi
oh !!! super cam.
thanx admin
What a great idea! The next time Chevron Texaco wants a reporter to write about how unfairly they’ve been treated for polluting the Amazon they can just name their price on GFM!
On a less cynical side, though – part of the purpose of the news is to discover things you -don’t- already know about. I can see some appeal to “tell me more” for a price but for the most part I look to journalism to find out about what I don’t yet know – relying on editors and producers to bird-dog the stories for me.