A few weeks ago, MyDD.com (Direct Democracy for People-Powered Politics) asked readers for help in paying its rent. The goal: $100 from 100 people. In a weekend, it raised $11,557.94 from 142. Matt Stoller said the financial support validated the site’s mission and with the extra money hired Tim Tagaris to go to New Orleans and cover the Congressional race between Karen Carter and William Jefferson.

Such support would seem to indicate that citizen-funded journalism is continuing to catch on. Two strong examples — Christopher Allbritton’s Back to Iraq, around since 2003, and Michael J. Totten’s Middle East Journal, which began earlier this year, indicate that freelancers are increasingly seeking out this model.

Such excitement prompts us to wonder: Is this model — independent, citizen-funded, and interactive — likely to change the character of investigative journalism?

Accountability, the notion that independent journalists are beholden to their readers, not to editors or a company’s profit margin, seem to be one of several recurring themes.

“It is so much nicer to have the freedom to write whatever I want without any oversight, without any rules or restrictions, without any word limits, and without any delays,” writes Totten in his “Experiment in Journalism” post.

“You sent me down here, and deserve to know what I’m working on and what you’ll see in the days ahead,” writes Tagaris, giving the list of upcoming stories he intends to report on in Louisiana.

At its best, this arrangement allows the reporter to truly act as the voice of the readers. One imagines the journalist asks the questions the readers would ask if they were on the scene; his are the ideas the readers would express if they were handy at the keyboard. With the reporter and his audience in a symbiotic relationship, the values of the community come to shape the stories. In effect, the readership becomes an editorial board.

Yet, questions do arise: Do only the stories readers are already passionate about get covered? And, to keep the shirt on his back, does the journalist pander to his readers? What happens when the reporters and editors say no to the citizen-bosses? Exchanging accountability to a corporation for accountability to the masses doesn’t necessarily make the results more virtuous (Remember Animal Farm?).
To be fair, there’s no evidence a slip into propaganda has occurred in Allbritton’s or Totten’s blogs, which brings us to the second theme: Trust.

“I appreciate your common sense predisposition,” comments one reader to Totten. “You’re the guy I meet at happy hour; you’re a buddy from school or work; you’re the neighbor who just returned from vacation and has well-observed stories to tell. But the minute you start hanging out at the hotel bars and adopt the jaded mask of a professional journalist I’ll dump you.”

In conventional media, the reputation of the newspaper or the magazine often serves as an appeal to a reader’s trust; we trust the publication, and therefore the writer. In reader-funded journalism, the candor and perceived integrity of the journalist matters — which is probably why Totten can get away with calling his subscribers jackasses.

Interestingly, readers also seem to assume that their man-on-the-street will deliver the perspective of the man on the street. It’s not access to power that’s important; it’s ability to connect with other ordinary folks, just like the readers.

I’m reminded of a lecture I heard a few years ago by Ryszard Kapuscinski. The only Polish reporter in Africa in the 1960s, Kapuscinski couldn’t afford to travel on helicopters or stay in the swank hotels with the other reporters from better-funded bureaus. He took the bus and slept in dirty beds in the worst parts of town. As a result (he says), he got some of the best stories, just as many countries were laboring into independence.

This desire for the voice of the people may be the most striking part of the information readers are looking for in a new model of journalism. Reader-funded journalism has the potential not only to transform who’s giving us the news, but who is the news.

Finally, reader-funded journalism raises the question of danger. What happens if an independent journalist gets sued, injured, or killed? Readers become responsible — and to what degree, then, are they obligated to pay up, either in money or in guilt?

For all their faults, big organizations provide protection; when readers on Allbritton’s and Totten’s blog comment over and over, “Be safe,” “Be careful,” “Take care of yourself,” they’re acknowledging that their guy is at risk — and if he wasn’t, they probably wouldn’t be reading him. While nice, such comments don’t really answer what would happen to a freelancer if he or she were seriously injured.

Still, the excitement is there. Stoller says the issue is not one just of business, but of values. Reader-funded journalism is exciting because it’s also changing a social dynamic: It threatens the authority of the corporation, the large donor, and the foundation, and it champions the unadulterated will of the people and the perspective of the common man. Like any shift of power, and especially one that promises more to many, the shift is exciting and full of possibilities.

As the shortcomings of mainstream media are becoming both more apparent and less tolerable to the general public, reader-funded journalism provides a promising alternative — albeit one with problems yet to be discovered.

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Kelly Nuxoll is a consulting editor for the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools. She has a MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Columbia University and currently lives in Bangkok, Thailand, where she is the local Vice-Chair for
Democrats Abroad.