Last week, the relatively popular and useful journalism crowdfunding website Beacon Reader closed its doors for undisclosed reasons. No one really saw this coming, and it's interesting to speculate why this could have happened and what caused it.
By all measures, the site should have been sustainable. Most campaigns on the site were successful - and overwhelmingly so - so it is not as if the concept or execution were particularly off. I have to imagine that the reason for the shut-down was not financially-based whatsoever because, from what I can gather, there is no financial basis with which to shut the website down.
That said, while this website was great for the field of journalism specifically, there are numerous other crowdfunding platforms out there that get more exposure. There is the argument that because the likes of Kickstarter have more campaigns operating at once, it is harder to get noticed, however the contrary argument is that more people visit those sites in general.
Another interesting crowdfunding platform is Patreon which, intstead of backing a single project, is used as a consistent subscription-based crowdfunding platform. In many ways, it takes the burden of setting up a subscription interface on your website, but most creators who use Patreon still make all of their content free and accessible to everyone, instead giving behind-the-scenes looks into the process or other perks. Democracy NOW uses a similar setup, although they do not use Patreon to achieve this.
All things considered, Beacon Reader was a great website, but it was not a necessary one exactly. Incredible journalism projects can still be crowdfunded in numerous ways, and having these options available allows for more unique, unbiased content that people show they want with their wallet
Tuesday, October 25, 2016
Saturday, October 15, 2016
Response to Mark Halperin Riding With Trump in Helicopter
What an absolute embarrassment in journalism. This story is proof of mainstream media's complete and utter ineptitude in reporting on Donald Trump, and stories like these are the exact reason why he got as far in the election as he has.
During the entire video, Trump is very clearly the one in control of the story, talking about what he wants when he wants to and even telling Halperin when and when not to film. This tells a tainted portrait of who Donald Trump is as a person, essentially making this journalistic video an extension of Trump's advertising campaign.
Even had Trump not clearly controlled the entire thing, Halperin simply did not ask questions that were at all important for the American public to know. By far the worst example of this is the infamous question regarding Donald Trump not owning many jeans, a question that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with his bid for president or even his quality as a person. These soft, pointless questions also convince voters, intentionally or not, that these questions and answers are the ones that matter, rather than the actual issues.
During the entire video, Trump is very clearly the one in control of the story, talking about what he wants when he wants to and even telling Halperin when and when not to film. This tells a tainted portrait of who Donald Trump is as a person, essentially making this journalistic video an extension of Trump's advertising campaign.
Even had Trump not clearly controlled the entire thing, Halperin simply did not ask questions that were at all important for the American public to know. By far the worst example of this is the infamous question regarding Donald Trump not owning many jeans, a question that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with his bid for president or even his quality as a person. These soft, pointless questions also convince voters, intentionally or not, that these questions and answers are the ones that matter, rather than the actual issues.
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
Response to "In Fact"
This post is in response to the 355th Edition of In Fact, distributed in my independent media class last week.
George Seldes' arguably most influential battle as expressed in In Fact is his fight against the cigarette industry, which largely ignored science and advertised tobacco smoking as a healthy habit to partake in. Mainstream media largely ignored the issue because they published numerous cigarette ads in their publications.
Reading about the "Stop Cancer" drive suppressing the facts about cigarettes was just mind-blowing in retrospect. One would think that if anyone were to fight against something that causes cancer, it would be Walter Winchell and his campaign. Evidently that just is not the case. Seldes points out that Winchell is not sponsored by tobacco companies, but that because media outlets are largely sponsored by tobacco companies, it is possible that, regardless of what Winchell believes, the media will still instead choose to ignore facts.
I particularly like the layout of the pamphlet. The main story is on the right two-thirds of the page at all times, with side stories on the left (this is inverted on the reverse sides, which also makes sense). Within the main story there are multiple subheadings which clearly point out which aspect of the issue is being commented on in that section. This allows the article, which covers a wide array of different topics related to the cigarette industry, to read well and not seem disjointed.
Another aspect I liked was how Seldes called out specific publications and addressed specific issues with how they discussed tobacco, pointing out how substantial of a monetary contribution the tobacco industry makes to said publication and then what the publication said that simply is not true. The one that shocked me the most was Fortune, who reported that the "'evil' of smoking does not add up to much more than a zero".
George Seldes' arguably most influential battle as expressed in In Fact is his fight against the cigarette industry, which largely ignored science and advertised tobacco smoking as a healthy habit to partake in. Mainstream media largely ignored the issue because they published numerous cigarette ads in their publications.
Reading about the "Stop Cancer" drive suppressing the facts about cigarettes was just mind-blowing in retrospect. One would think that if anyone were to fight against something that causes cancer, it would be Walter Winchell and his campaign. Evidently that just is not the case. Seldes points out that Winchell is not sponsored by tobacco companies, but that because media outlets are largely sponsored by tobacco companies, it is possible that, regardless of what Winchell believes, the media will still instead choose to ignore facts.
I particularly like the layout of the pamphlet. The main story is on the right two-thirds of the page at all times, with side stories on the left (this is inverted on the reverse sides, which also makes sense). Within the main story there are multiple subheadings which clearly point out which aspect of the issue is being commented on in that section. This allows the article, which covers a wide array of different topics related to the cigarette industry, to read well and not seem disjointed.
Another aspect I liked was how Seldes called out specific publications and addressed specific issues with how they discussed tobacco, pointing out how substantial of a monetary contribution the tobacco industry makes to said publication and then what the publication said that simply is not true. The one that shocked me the most was Fortune, who reported that the "'evil' of smoking does not add up to much more than a zero".
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