MCLC: journalist tries to crowdfund his career

Mon Nov 4 09:05:57 EST 2013

MCLC LIST
From: pjmooney <pjmooney at me.com>
Subject: journalist tries to crowdfund his career
***********************************************************

Source: ABC News (11/1/13):
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/chinese-journalist-crowdfund-car
eer-20749719

Chinese journalist tries to crowdfund his career
By LOUISE WATT

Associated Press Oct 31, 2013BEIJING (AP) - From his temporary home on a
friend's sofa, Yin Yusheng hopes to craft a new kind of journalism in
China, where the industry is widely seen as state-controlled and corrupt.
He wants to make his readers the boss - and that includes paying his
salary.

Once users pledge 5,000 yuan ($800) - half his monthly pay when he worked
for a business daily - he takes a story up. He has completed one piece
since beginning his experiment in crowdfunding in September, appealing to
those who are "tired of the praises sung by the state-run media."

Journalism in China is held in low esteem by many members of the public,
not just because virtually all media is state-controlled and toes the
government line, but also because of dirty practices dating back to the
1990s. Journalists regularly demand money from companies or individuals
not to report a negative story about them, and expect a "red envelope"
with cash to report a positive development or to turn up at a press
conference.

Yin, who lost a reporting job at a magazine earlier this year when it
changed from a weekly to a monthly, wants to be beholden only to the
news-reading public, and is testing whether crowdfunding from online
donations can give him a stable income.

In an online mission statement, he says crowdfunding can make a product
successful, save a company and bring donations to the weak and vulnerable.
"In the same way, it can give us the truth," he writes.

There already are several self-styled citizen journalists in China
publishing online reports on their own websites. Yin said he wants to
bring a professional standard to this kind of reporting and thinks
colleagues in the industry may follow his lead because such reporting
"enjoys a little more sliver of freedom" than working in the
state-controlled industry.

Yin, 43, has advertised his story ideas on China's two largest
microblogging sites and the online marketplace Taobao.

The crowdfunded investigative piece he has completed was about Chen
Baocheng, a Beijing reporter detained during a protest over a land
demolition in his hometown. Yin's pitch attracted the required funding
within 24 hours. A week and a half later, he uploaded the finished piece
onto two Twitter-like microblogging sites, Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo.

State media stories on the case tended to focus on police and lawyers'
reactions, but Yin's vivid report was based on more than 20 interviews
with police, lawyers, witnesses, local officials and some of those who had
been detained. Some reports alleged that Chen doused an excavator operator
in gasoline, but Yin's report found that he had arrived only after others
had already poured the fuel.

Yin also tweets from the scene. "I am on the scene, meaning you are on the
scene as well," his promise to readers goes.

His plan came from discussions with friends who, like him, entered print
journalism from backgrounds in computer science or online media, and who
began to see the Internet's power to usurp traditional media.

"We began to ask ourselves the question: Why do we have to confine
ourselves to one specific media outlet? Many of us had already become
quite influential, so publishing an article online might have more public
impact," he said in an interview at a Beijing cafe.

In the U.S. and Europe, journalists and activists have used crowdfunding
sites such as Kickstarter to find money for one-off creative projects,
like a first book or a documentary. A number of sites also have
experimented with such financing for journalists in the past few years,
especially in the United States, said George Brock, a journalism professor
at City University London.

"I don't think it's going to be the central plank or pillar of a new
business model for journalism, but the experiments that have been done in
it have shown that projects that catch people's imagination, whether they
be Web or print or film, really can raise money," Brock said.

Yin set his limit at 5,000 yuan, which is also slated to cover his
expenses, in hopes of discouraging the notion that a big spender could
control his agenda. He uploaded details on the 1,955 yuan he spent
covering his first report, including photos of bus and train tickets and
other receipts.

He is saving money by staying in a friend's apartment, which he says might
also make it more difficult for officials to track him down.

He risks becoming a target in the government's intensified crackdown on
online expression. In recent months, China's leaders have clamped down on
what they call online rumors and efforts to erode the rule of the
Communist Party through lies and negative news. Their targets have
included celebrity bloggers that call attention to social injustices.

Even if the government does not detain Yin, it could scrub his reports
from the Internet.

"The key point here is the distribution question" and whether Yin's
reports will be censored, said David Bandurski, a researcher with the
China Media Project at Hong Kong University. "All Internet is China is in
a recent period of extreme intensification of control and he's dealing -
presumably if he's doing investigations - with sensitive issues."
___
Follow Louise Watt on Twitter at twitter.com/louise_watt
<http://twitter.com/louise_watt>