Journal media funding campaign attracts 5,000 donations in two months
THE chief executive of Journal Media says that the company has attracted over 5,000 financial contributions from readers in the two months since it launched its funding campaign.
Mr Acosta also said that there is a future for advertising-funded Irish media but that online publishers would also not shrink from requesting access to any proposed expansion of media funding schemes originating from the State.
“We were expecting to do this at a later stage, maybe a year down the line,” Mr Acosta told the Irish Independent’s Big Tech Show podcast. “Then when the collapse in advertising happened [during the pandemic lockdown], we thought we might as well just get it out there. We got over 5,000 contributors within those two months and we’re a bit over 5,000 at the moment. To me, that’s a really good result and it’s a testament that there are plenty of people who value the work we do and news in general.”
Reader contributions, sometimes framed as ‘membership’, is a revenue model used by some media publishers as an alternative or a supplementary method to advertising and paywalls.
Its most prominent advocate is ‘The Guardian’, which has attributed its turnaround from large losses to profitability to its ‘Support The Guardian’ contribution campaign.
The UK media publisher says that so far over a million people have donated in this way.
In Ireland, other long-standing online published are experimenting with versions of the format.
“We launched a tip jar as a result of people telling us that they had been reading us free for years and asking whether they could help,” said Ann O’Dea, CEO and co-founder of Silicon Republic, who added that her company had seen the same general downturn in online advertising as other Irish media companies.
“It’s trial and error. We’ve looked at all the models throughout the years, membership schemes and others. But it’s not something that we see as sustainable for us in the long term. It works well for sites like [US magazine publisher] Mother Jones because of the type of public interest journalism that they do.”
Asked whether reader contributions would continue to be a core part of revenue in future, Mr Acosta said it “certainly” would be.
“With The 42 [Journal sport website] and Noteworthy, we started around a year ago,” he said. “In both cases, we have ways for the reader to make direct payments in lieu of something else. I expect the growth will come from there much more than from advertising, where it’s going to be under pressure.”
Asked about the distribution of cash in any reconstituted or expanded State media-funding scheme, Mr Acosta said that his company would consider it.
“I think we should make a case if it encompasses something that we can provide,” he said. “If not, then no.”
The programme for government has recommended the creation of a new minister for media. Previous Fianna Fail plans promised, as part of a reconstitution of media structural funding, a new general fund to be made available to a wider variety of Irish media organisations. However, there has been little detail on how such a fund would be set up or which organisations would qualify for access.
‘It’s a testament that there are plenty of people who value the work we do’