We need your help to spread the word about Newsdesk and News You Might Have Missed, and develop a powerful network of donors and advocates that can strengthen public service journalism at the community level.
Newsdesk.org is an online news experiment that seeks to demonstrate the viability of in-depth, context-rich reportage in an advertising-free medium.
In that regard, it’s as much an idea that needs to be propagated as it is a productive news operation in San Francisco.
BACKGROUND
Newsdesk.org was founded in 2000 by professional journalists seeking to cover issues beyond the pop stars, scandal and “usual suspects” that fill out the ad-saturated mainstream media.
We’ve set a standard for coverage is broadminded, thorough, context-rich, free of the herd mentality, and frequently ahead of the majors.
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I hope your model of news presentation succeeds.
I’d like to see a subscription-based daily newscast, web-based, wherein subscribers can pull up the morning or nightly newscast at their leisure by paying only a nominal recurring charge.
As with Netflix, one would simply sign up to have $10 a month taken from their credit card, but would then have unlimited access to standard daily “TV style” news broadcasts, ala Youtube, that can be watched while eating breakfast or cooking dinner.
Asking people to donate on a one-time basis will provide limited returns, recurring billing will provide a more substantial base.
Good luck
Jeff Greef
The content is great, but your site is far from adequate. You guys need to invest in a web developer. Need referals?
Thanks for your comments, folks.
We’d love to get a recurring donation program happening, and in fact you CAN make recurring donations through our donations page.
However, I wonder if it’s smart to make this a premium service? My instinct says “nope.” Information wants to be free, and this nonprofit journalism project is meant to be free and available for all as a service to our democracy.
However, developing some sort of value-added benefit for donors would be great.
Our primary problem is a complete lack of capacity, as we are almost entirely volunteer-run.
(That same lack of capacity is preventing us from making full use of this Web site, Stefan, which actually has way more functionality than we are currently making use of.)
We also could start generating revenue from Google Adwords — our traffic is good enough to support that — but we do feel there is an opportunity to stay idealistic with this project and remain ad-free.
Our current funding strategy has to combine developing individual donors, plus earned income (syndicating our work to other outlets), plus foundation grants (the toughest nut of all to crack).
Your advice and financial contributions will help us along the way!