When John Byrne wanted to upgrade the computers his staff at The Raw Story were using, he reached out to the readers of the news website to help pay for the upgrade. His audience was equally generous when he wanted to bring on board additional staff to launch Raw Story’s own investigative work.

Byrne calls the donation drives part of a hybrid business model. “Most of our funding is from advertisers, but when we want to do more extensive projects, we’ve found our readers to be very responsive when presented with specific goals.”

Other online journalism sites, like the hyper-local New Haven Independent are finding similar success. Make a site relevant to a particular audience, and readers will respond by opening their wallets.

At The Raw Story, readers also can access the site ad free through a subscription. Bryne says he hates websites that require registration, but he offers a subscription that requires registration if a reader hates advertising as much as he abhors registration.

He says traffic hit an all-time high of around 800,000 unique visitors around the November midterm elections. It’s flattened since then, but with a presidential election already peeking around the corner, it’s a good bet a site like The Raw Story, which aggregates content that is national and international in flavor, will find a growing following.

For a hybrid business model that draws on reader donations, that can mean only good things.

Chris Lopez has been working in newsrooms since the age of 17, and over the past 28 years has covered a variety of beats from the National Football League to Denver City Hall. Most recently he worked at the Contra Costa Times.