Community-funded journalism project in Australia

I`ve blogged a bit about community-funded journalism before. It`s one of the new media funding models emerging as mainstream media continue to cut back on their staff and the global financial crisis is rocking media in general.

At the MEAA-summit (Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance) in Australia last week, journalist and author Margaret Simmons announced plans for a loose consortium of journalists, publishers and universities to set up "the first substantial experiment in community-funded journalism in Australia, the foundation for Public Interest Journalism."

"The idea is to develop a more interactive relationship between potential audiences and journalists so that audiences can directly commission the journalism they want," says Simons.

I`m still not sure about this model. The idea of having people pay a journalist to write a story just sounds wrong. I`m not sure about the whole public interest-argument, either. There is a difference between public interest and what`s of interest to the public.

The report following the MEAA-summit, "Life In a Clickstream: The Future of Journalism", can be read here