Journeys and Star Gazing

I wrote Reporters Without Media Mogul Borders as a comment to a post by Sally Baxter Pity the poor journalist…  on the blog  Australians For Honest Politics. The blog is dedicated to Citizen Journalism.

Reporters Without Media Mogul Borders is an idea which takes into account the rapid move away from old media onto Social Media. The idea is an attempt to introduce participatory and democratic processes into journalism using the new mobile web technologies.

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Readers by partnering with regional newspapers could be joint commissioners of stories forming a hub interconnected by the web. This hub can be across the country, indeed from across the planet, which can employ reporters to investigate issues of importance to local communities.

Readers would raise funds by crowd sourcing, perhaps using the model that GetUp uses to raise funds for advertisements in old media. Instead of using funds to pay for advertisements the funds would be used to pay for a reporter’s commission to write / investigate story. The local newspaper could provide the administrative infrastructure. There could also be a tiered system of influence in the choice of reporter by readers. For example, a donation of $100 ( or whatever amount) is made would allow the reader to help choose the reporter for the story. Reporters could send their CV / application which would be accessible to the donaters on the web and those who donated the prescribed amount could choose the reporter to do the job by online voting.

People who do not donate can still be engaged in the funding by buying the individual story that has been commissioned by readers like themselves.   The model of local action with global transmission already exists with organisations such as Avaaz. We can take the idea of Reporters Without Borders to its logical conclusion – Reporters Without Media Mogul Borders.