Turning to Public to Back Investigative Journalism

If you suspect your local town government is corrupt, would you pay a journalist to investigate? Uncoverage, a website, will test whether the public cares enough about investigative journalism to pay for it.

The site will allow journalists and nonprofits to seek crowdsourced funding for both articles and topics like, for example, the Syrian war. Money for general topics will be split up among projects by the site’s editors. The nonprofit investigative group the Center for Public Integrity has signed on as a partner whose projects will be featured on the site. The commercial site is being founded by Israel Mirsky, an entrepreneur who said that the current model for financing investigative journalism was broken.

(Dec 1)