It was an experiment in journalism that ended up being right on the money.
The Vancouver-based Tyee online daily asked readers to pony up money to pay for provincial election coverage, and the editor of the publication was astonished that the cash actually started rolling in.
With donations averaging $50, David Beers said yesterday there is now more than $10,000 available to cover the costs of reporting stories on corruption, the environment, housing/poverty and education - a list of topics offered like a menu to which readers could earmark their donations. Mr. Beers thought the Tyee would be lucky to get $5,000.
"I am amazed because these are rough economic times for everybody. That's one of the reasons the Tyee is having this drive. Our resources are tight for us. They're tight for all media," Mr. Beers said.
The Tyee, which gets about 250,000 visits to its pages per month for a topical mix of news, investigative features and popular culture, isn't even offering a charitable tax receipt.
The Election Reporting Issues fundraising drive began April 6 and ends today as campaigning begins for the May 12 vote.
Variations on the idea of what Mr. Beers called "reader pay" have been tried in the United States with, in one case, reporters shopping investigative story ideas around for reader support.
But he sees the Tyee as distinct from that model. "The concern I would have there is maybe I don't know the writer; maybe I don't know they can do a great job. With the Tyee, hopefully with our five-year track record, somebody has a sense of what we might be able to accomplish with the money," he said.
Journalism professor Stephen Ward describes the Tyee's experiment as a sign of the journalistic times.
"It is just a further development of the current troubles with the economic model of journalism right now," said Prof. Ward, the James E. Burgess Professor of Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an adjunct professor at the journalism school at the University of British Columbia.
Prof. Ward said there are some ethical perils around such an approach that publications like the Tyee would have to navigate, including media outlets maintaining control over the focus of the story, and reporting stories with objectivity.
The Tyee decided to give the concept a shot as a result of an "if-only" conversation among editors about having more resources.
"And then we said our readers might want to give us those resources if they felt like they were empowered to be able to tell us what they wanted to find out about," said Mr. Beers, noting the issues on the agenda are matters the Tyee would have covered anyway.
"No one is directing us on how to go after these issues. Once the issue is established, nobody is saying, 'And I want it reported this way.' "
He said he did not believe there was anything to keep "corporate media" from trying the same initiative.
"A lot of it is based on the relationship you have built up with your reader community. If they believe you do good work, and they feel there's a need for you to focus your expertise in a certain area, why not ask them to help?"
