Beacon, a crowdfunding platform for journalistic projects, announced a new partnership with Newsweek on Wednesday, November 5th. The media outlet will be working with Beacon to raise $20,000 by November 26th for an investigative series about sexual assaults on U.S. college campuses.
Mandy Van Deven is the writer and editor working on the project. In the campaign’s description, she invites backers to support the endeavor, promising, “Back me, and I’ll bring you stories about how responses to sexual assault on campus have changed – and what still needs to be done.” Supporters essentially are subscribing to content, including real time updates from the writer as she explores college campuses in the U.S., as well as in-depth reports and features based on her research.
Beacon’s crowdfunding platform launched a year ago and was co-founded by Facebook’s former managing editor Dan Fletcher. The platform had evolved from funding new projects to include working with existing media outlets to raise money to cover specific topics. Despite it’s progress, the platform has also been met with criticism.
When Beacon partnered with The Huffington Post in August to provide coverage of the events that took place in Ferguson, it received backlash from other media companies due to The Huffington Post’s association with AOL.
“The way that the Beacon Reader project has been spun by some outlets is that the Huffington Post is freeloading by asking the crowd to help pay for a citizen journalist to cover Ferguson — so that it can use that content on its site and generate ad revenue while contributing nothing.” – Source.
Beacon’s co-founder Adrian Sanders addressed these concerns by saying, “It’s not up to Beacon about how and where news organizations should spend their dollars, all we’re doing is saying: Here’s a chance to do more with new revenue models and create a hyper-engaged readership around this editorial at the same time.”
Although there has been criticism regarding the partnership between big media brands and crowdfunding, it has also been argued that crowdfunding journalism leads to increased transparency. This is one of the reasons the Newsweek gave for partnering with Beacon:
“At Newsweek, we are excited about and seek out new models of journalism, particularly those that encourage greater transparency in all stages of the reporting and publication process. We understand that crowdfunding is not the end-all solution to the financial challenges faced by many publishers and journalists. However, we do believe that it can help provide a greater level of journalistic freedom in certain difficult-to-finance projects where editorial mission and public interest align.”
Beacon announced another partnership on Wednesday with the Pacific Standard to raise funds for a series of reports covering the Ebola and the food crisis in West Africa.
About the author
Krystine Therriault is the community manager for CrowdCrux and has helped creators with their crowdfunding projects on KickstarterForum.org. She loves learning about new trending projects and dissecting them to bring new tips and information to creators. You can find her on LinkedIn here or Twitter here.
