Crowd-funding journalism in France: Jaimelinfo.fr

On Monday March 28 Jaimelinfo.fr was launched in France: a new web platform for crowd-funding journalism whose principal aim to support quality online journalism ("soutenez la presse en ligne" says the subhead). It was created by the news site Rue89. Crowd-funding works on the basis that readers can collectively finance news sites or projects. Citizens can now contribute to news in several ways, by sourcing (crowd-sourcing) or producing (citizen journalism) as well as funding. The best known example of crowd-funding journalism is Spot.Us, a start up based in California's Bay Area, founded by David Cohn with help from the Knight Foundation. Anyone can suggest a story about an important topic he/she thinks should be reported on. A budget for developing the story is fixed, and then anyone can donate towards covering the story, which will be investigated, once the amount is reached, by one or more professional reporters. Reporters can also create "Assignments" and invite the public to help them out. However, while at Spot.Us is the public to commission and participate with journalists to do reporting on important and perhaps overlooked topics, Jaimelinfo counts on existing news websites and news blogs, LSDI reported. It has already gained the support of about 80 websites and blogs, Ouest-France reported. The aim is to create a federation of French-speaking sites and blogs

http://www.ejc.net/media_news/crowd-funding_journalism_in_france_jaimelinfo.fr/