Liveblog in English, by Olli Sulopuisto of Nonfiktio.fi

Twitter #jourfut

Anything else to add, in English?

Twitter hashtag #jourfut

The event is organized by the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation.

I will represent my research report about the future of journalism: 10 Statements About the End of Journalism and Why Not to Worry About Them. The Trends of American Journalism in 2009, followed by a panel discussion featuring superinteresting panelists:

Helene Auramo, Co-founder, partner of Indiedays.com, a collective of fashion blogs @heleneauramo,

Google alumn, Jaiku co-founder Jyri Engeström, @jyri

Mikael Pentikäinen, CEO of Sanoma News

Mikael Jungner, CEO of Finnish Broadcasting  Company, @mikaeljungner

Stay tuned!

The most recent sign of the evolving power of crowdfunding was seen in the New York Times. In the science section there was an article with a headline “Afloat in the Ocean, Expanding Islands of Trash.” The article told about the huge garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean. In the bottom of the story there stood in italics: “Travel expenses were paid in part by readers of Spot.Us, a nonprofit Web project that supports freelance journalists.”

The story was written by a freelance journalist Lindsey Hoshaw. Her trip to examine the garbage patch was partially funded through Spot.Us, a San Francisco-based website to crowdfund journalism. This is how Spot.Us works: A journalist raises money for her or his story on the Spot.Us website. The community donates for a pitch. Often times the amounts are small. Established news organizations can buy the story and publish it, otherwise the story is published on the Spot.Us site.

Hoshaw successfully raised almost $10,000 for her story project, and over 100 people donated for the pitch. The garbage patch story was the first Spot.Us story published in the NYT

In politics, from the Howard Dean campaign to Obama’s triumph, we have seen a radical decentralization of political funding. In journalism, crowdfunding in the Spot.Us way decentralizes the editorial power. The editorial power is traditionally held inside news organizations. The editors decide what stories the writers work on and what stories are published.

In crowdfunded journalism the Spot.Us way, donors hold most of the editorial power. The pitches are filtered by Spot.Us editors following certain criteria, though. For example the pitches have to be local to Spot.Us regions. So far, only few pitches have been turned away. Basically, if the community considers the topic worth covering, they’ll donate and the story will get done.

The crowdfunding phenomenon is a sign of the unraveling of the old, top-down journalism production models. In the future, the community will have more to say about the issues they want to see covered. Even though the readers don’t want to subscribe for the whole newspaper, they are willing to pay for a specific story that they see value in. That’s why they hire a journalist on Spot.Us to make sense of the world for them, to investigate important issues for them. They want to support journalism and topics that are aligned with their values.

Crowdfunding seems to change the dynamics in the journalistic process. I’ve interviewed Spot.Us donors and reporters for my study about crowdfunding for journalism.

The donors tend to feel empowered after donation. Donating seems to create a sense of belonging to the community, and the donors also feel a sense of participation in the journalistic process. As one donor put it: “I felt that I had participated, I felt I had more say about what kind of journalism is being done.”

From the reporter’s point of view, the crowdfunded process brings new elements to a journalist’s work. First of all, the reporters tend to feel a more direct connection to the readers than they do in the traditional way to produce journalism.

The reporters find the connection motivating. As one of the Spot.Us writers said: “The motivation goes beyond professional motivation. You see the faces on the website, you see that these people are willing to invest their money on your work.”

Crowdfunding also challenges the the traditional role of a journalist. On the Spot.Us model, the writer is responsible for promoting his pitch and reaching out to the community. In the traditional model, the journalist writes the story, doesn’t market it.

When interviewing Spot.Us reporters, I noticed that in general they don’t feel very comfortable asking for donations for their pitch. Like one of the reporters put it: “I’m a journalist, not a salesperson. If somebody else wants to market my pitch, I’m happy with that. But I don’t feel comfortable doing that.”

Whereas Lindsey Hoshaw, the author of the Garbage Patch-story, promoted her pitch by a video and in fundraisers. She also reached out to the community and her social networks. She branded herself as the GarbageGirl. This is something we will see more and more in journalism: journalists transforming more into entrepreneurs, feeling ownership of the whole story process including convincing the community to donate.

The success of crowdfunding in journalism might encourage thinking where charging for content online is a solution for the plummeting journalism business. It is not. The success of the Garbage Patch-project proves that people want to have quality journalism. It proves that people care about important issues. It also proves that people are willing to pay for the journalism they see valuable. Maybe readers want to target their support for certain writers, or certain topics? They might not be willing to pay for old-fashioned subscription models, which are based on the idea “get it all, even the sports pages, read it or not”.

The same logic applies initiatives similar to Spot.Us. On Kickstarter, artists, journalists and explorers can raise money for their projects. SellaBand has two ways to for fans to support projects: they can help musicians to fund their upcoming projects, or they can fund musicians whose work they already like. Also Kachingle, a system for readers to support the sites they like, raises money for work already done.

At the end, let’s discuss the Spot.Us model from the legitimacy’s standpoint. The main basis for legitimacy for a story is pure market success — if people are willing to pay, the story gets funded on Spot.Us and the story will be done.

But then, pitches that might be significant for public interest, for the public good, might not get donations. But what is the public interest? Whose interest is it? If people are not willing to pay for the content, for the pitch, is the topic really important? If the community is not interested in funding the pitch, how interested the community would be in reading the story?

The model of Spot.Us, accompanied with other crowdfunding systems, provokes a question: How much could we rely on collective intelligence, wisdom of the crowds, when choosing story topics worth investigating?

This blog post was first published on the Huffington Post.

How does the crowdfunding process affect the reporter? For example, does pitching a story in public create a new sense of engagement and connectedness to the society?

And the reader – when a reader donates for a story, does the reader feel a stronger sense of ownership in the journalistic process than he or she feels in the traditional journalistic process?

Those are some of the questions I’m looking into in my research project. I’m studying Spot.Us as a case of new ways to produce journalism. Spot.Us is crowdsourcing story topics, leads and information from the community and crowdfunding the stories by microdonations from the community.

Opening the journalistic process to the crowd creates a new level of transparency to “the making of -part” of journalism. On Spot.Us, pitching and fundraising happens in public. The reporters blog about the stories they are working on – like Lindsey Hoshaw is doing from her assignment to the Pacific Garbage Patch. Furthermore, the community gives information, names sources and other tips for the story in public on the Spot.Us platform.

A Spot.Us reporter Serena Renner says that being able to share the process from the beginning to the end with the crowd decreases the pressure to get everything said in one story.

“When you can blog along the way, you can create kind of a more complete picture of a story than maybe one article with a limited wordcount can do,” she says.

“And as anyone can suggest questions or leads for the story, there is a potential to divert the story throughout the process. It is good for getting the real, honest story out,” she says.

If transparency really is the new objectivity in journalism, as technologist and author David Weinberger says, the journalistic process becomes more transparent most likely over time, even in traditional news rooms. Is transparency something that the new generation of journalists will get used to?

That’s why it is fascinating to explore how the new levels of transparency impact the reporter’s work. For example, the process of pitching and raising money in public might strengthen the connection between the community and the reporter. It might also create a different sense of responsibility for the reporter.

“You worry more about the accuracy, and you really want to invest in presenting issues correctly, because these people have really invested in you,” Serena Renner says.

A donation for a story can be seen as an investment or a vote. After “investing in the story,” the donor might want to follow the story process closely – the same way a voter follows the politician he or she votes for.

How about the sense of ownership in the journalistic process? In the traditional newsmaking, a reporter owns her or his story. The reporter finds the topic, pitches it inside the news organization, finds the sources, becomes an expert on the topic, and holds on the information until the story is published. It is rare when the traditional news organizations reveal anything about “making of-process.”

Whereas, in the Spot.Us model, the ownership is shared with the community from the beginning to the end. The reporter doesn’t need to feel pressure to become an ultimate expert on the topic, as the crowd is there with its wisdom, too.

“I admit that I’m not expert on food or school system or school food system, while I may be owning the story and to produce an honest piece about it,” Renner says.

I will blog about my research on Spot.Us. Please feel free to share your opinions on crowdsourcing in journalism – I’d love to hear them!

This post was originally published on Spot.Us, a platform for community funded reporting.

These were some of the ideas presented this week in the Forum on Communications and Society (FOCAS) in Aspen, Colorado organized by the Aspen Institute. The conference focused primarily on discussing the business models for journalism as the news industry seems to be completely confused how to find a new sustainable path in the changed news ecology.

High level representatives from the traditional newspaper industry, nonprofits producing journalism, new players in news like Google and Mozilla, start ups, and venture capitalists tried to find sense in the confusion.

The combination ended up being a gathering of a variety of perspectives to journalism and its future. From one perspective, newspaper printed on paper has a prosperous future. For example Dean Singleton, the CEO of MediaNews Group and the chairman of the board of directors of The Associated Press, said that business model can keep on being “charging for the printed word printed on a paper”.

From this reality comes also Gordon Crovitz, the former Wall Street Journal publisher and the co-founder of Journalism Online LLC. He even sees possibilities for raising the prices for the print product if the news sites start charging for the content online.

But Jeff Jarvis, the associate professor in City University of New York, thinks that we are entering post print era. He presented a model for new news economy, based on hyperlocal blogs supported by advertising. And for Cynthia Typaldos, a founder of news pay system Kachingle, news is something that the readers can be persuaded to pay for voluntarily.

For Sue Gardner, the Executive Director of Wikimedia Foundation, journalistic process involves also other contributors than professional journalists. Also, she sees the role of the news is not so much anymore to “tell people stuff, but to facilitate conversation.”

Along the same lines goes Scott Lewis, the CEO of Voice of San Diego, a non profit that provides local news service. For him, journalism and news are only a part of the institution, which has a mission to educate people. We are not looking for eyeballs for our website, but we want to focus on service and impact on the community, he said.

Apart from different perspectives for journalism production, the participants came from a variety of consumption habits, Madeleine Albright, the former Secretary of The State and former journalist, said that she reads every day several printed newspapers, with well-known brands, like the New York Times. At the other end of the consumption spectrum was a 26-year-old Jacob Colker, a co-founder of the Extraordinaries, a system for crowdsourcing on mobile. He rarely goes to newspapers websites but gets his news from his peers for example on Twitter.

Looking into the plethora of perspectives, it wasn’t surprising that the group didn’t find consensus which way to go in business models at this point in the evolution. But maybe there is not a need for consensus. News organizations can experiment several ways and thus find new, viable models suitable for their needs. If you want a good overview about different models, look at journalist Steve Outing’s presentation about the topic.

But does the industry have courage to do experiments? “There is a short-term market failure of courage”, Esther Dyson, the chairman of EDventure Holdings, described the state of the journalism industry. Is she right?

Yes, there is a lack of courage in experimenting new business models especially inside the traditional media. The discussion at the conference reflected that, too: the focus lingered around the notion whether the old subscription model could be applied at least partly to web publishing. One example of that is the freemium model, where the readers pay to get access to some of the content, but most of the content stays free at least in the beginning.

Why isn’t the legacy media trying out any new pay models? For example micropayments or donations to find out how many of the readers are willing to support good content?

One reason may be that the media industry is used to high profits. Donations feel like a nickel to them, and it might feel humiliating to rely on donations after making a lot of money for a long time. Beyond that, as Sue Gardner of Wikimedia pointed out, the corporations are often not suited for developing innovations. The organizations might not be so eager to try innovations either, especially when they come outside of the organization.

Thus it wasn’t surprising that the most interesting idea was brought up by Marissa Mayer, the VP of Search Products and User Experience at Google. She came up with and idea of a hyper-targeted news stream, that could be done for example by Google, Twitter or Facebook.

Nevertheless, Dyson’s observation about the lack of courage doesn’t capture the whole picture. There is a lot of courage in the journalism scene. New models or old models modified to this era are being experimented. For example, technology blogs in Silicon Valley are experimenting with their event and sponsorship economies, so is non profit investigative reporting like ProPublica, and community funded reporting initiatives like Spot.us.

But courage is needed at this time. Newspapers need courage to look into where society and technology is going, not focus on reinventing news organizations. Venture capitalists need courage to invest in journalism start ups. Non profits need courage to experiment.

And, the most importantly, all the players need courage to look into readers, contributors, citizens, users – however you call them – to find out what do they value in journalism and what they are willing to pay for.

Because, at the end, the solution can also look as simple as it is for venture capitalist Fred Drasner, who saw the situation from the VC’s point of view: “We have to figure out what the consumers want, make the product and sell it.”

The post was first published on Spot.us blog, a journalism experiment for community funded reporting.

These all are topics in a news meeting on a  Wednesday morning in the Public Press office in downtown San Francisco. Is there anything new in  the topics? Anything that the leading daily in the city,  the San Francisco Chronicle, wouldn’t cover?

Not really. Regardless, the Public Press wants to create something new: a daily, local, ad-free newspaper that is run by a non-profit organization based in San Francisco.

“A reader-centric, non-commercial newspaper, not focused on serving advertisers’ needs but serving the community”, says Michael Stoll, the founder of the Public Press.

For example, the prevailing newspapers have a lot of supplements that are serving advertisers, not readers, he says. He gives some examples: “There are sections about high-end luxury goods, that ordinary people can’t afford. There is a real estate section that is almost entirely about home sales in the newspaper in San Francisco, in a city where two thirds of the people rent. Why do they concentrate on home sales, when most of the potential readers are renters?” he asks.

Newspapers do that to attract advertisers, says Stoll. But instead of focusing on advertisers’ needs, the Public Press wants to cover topics that matter to the readers.

“Public policy and social issues. Labor related topics, like prevailing wages. Price of milk. Commuting”, Stoll lists the topics that the Public Press wants to cover.

The Public Press is not interested in emotion-based or sensationalist coverage, stories for the sake of storytelling, or stories based only on individual experience.

The Public Press is one in an array of the local or hyperlocal news initiatives in the US. For example, there’s MinnPost in Minneapolis, GothamGazette in New York, Crosscut in Seattle, The New Haven Independent, and Voice of San Diego.

They are all local non-profit initiatives focused on local news, sustained by donations, grants, some of them also by advertisements, with a mission to do “journalism that matters”. Yet what the Public Press is doing might be something unique, since the goal is to start publishing a print paper. The other initiatives mentioned above are available only online.

Why a printed newspaper? Isn’t everything online these days?

“There is still a digital divide in the US. There are a lot of people who have limited or no access to digital platforms. As a result, if you are limiting journalism just to the digital realm, those people will be left without the information they need to become active and informed citizens”, Stoll says.

He lists more reasons: People want to be unplugged too, since so many things are online these days. He also believes that there is a business opportunity for selling information on paper. He points out, 50 million newspapers are still being sold a day in the US.

“If there is still life left in the newspaper do we want to abandon it to the mega corporations that have taken over almost every newspaper in this country? Or do we want to take it back as journalism community and the local community and return some semblance of an idea of accountability to the public?”

Also, Stoll believes that hyperlocal content doesn’t work online that well, and therefore a printed newspaper can be more attractive locally.

“If your goal is to create a community and provide a forum for ideas and events, the Web is not necessarily the right medium to do that. Newspaper may be a better way because it is more visible in the local level.”

The Public Press, like the other local initiatives, embrace the community as an important part in making the news. Stoll says that is not often the case with the traditional media.

Traditionally, the readers cannot suggest changes to the format or content, talk with the journalists, or have much ability to discuss or debate the news, beyond maybe writing a Web comment or a letter to the editor, he says.

Stoll believes that a mission-driven organization like the Public Press is more likely to take an approach to serve the public than a profit-driven organization.

“This sense of duty toward public accountability tends to affect the coverage and guide it toward stories the mainstream media might miss. This is because we are in communication with a broad and diverse audience”, he says.

The Public Press wants to redesign the structure of newspaper. For example, the front page should have a clear, bird’s eye view, a comprehensive index of the stories available to the reader. That way, the reader doesn’t need to browse through the whole paper in order to find what there is.

Stoll sees financial advantages in redesigning the newspaper. For example, the size of the paper can be diminished, as the ads are not there to take space. Also the printing costs can go down.

“When you can change the business model you are able to change the design, the economics, and the reader experience. Maybe you can win back some of the readers who have abandoned the printed paper because it is too inconvenient and it doesn’t fill their needs.”

The Public Press started publishing content in March this year, and the content is currently available online for free. When the Public Press turns into a daily newspaper, it will be financed by membership payments. From memberships the Public Press wants to create a sustainable business model for a newspaper.

The membership gives the reader, or member, more rights than a traditional subscription model, where the reader remains pretty passive. Members could vote, for example, for candidates for the board of directors, and get benefits such as discounts from partner organizations, for example museums and book stores.

The Public Press website had 3 800 unique visitors in July, and the content is produced mainly by volunteers. The non profit is functioning now on donations and on a grant from the San Francisco Foundation.

The concept of the Public Press sounds great: Journalism that matters to the readers, communities get involved, the city hall has its watchdog, and no annoying ads in the paper. Nevertheless, how is the Public Press going succeed? Where are they going to get the money from?

“We want to be the Howard Dean campaign for journalism, meaning aggregating a lot of small scale donations”, Stoll says.

Howard Dean, a politician, pioneered in raising campaign dollars as small scale donations when he was running for democratic presidential nominee in 2004. Barack Obama followed this practice in his campaign last year.

Yet, the business model of the Public Press has been tested in the US for decades. Its business model can be seen as a combination of National Public Radio’s local broadcasting stations and non-profit magazines’.

“The local broadcasting station gives out its product for free but relies on about 10 percent of its audience to pay a small donation, because they believe it is a unique service. In addition, the Consumer Report magazine has been non profit and advertising free for 70 years”, Stoll says.