Here’s another one for that book I’m working on – I’m trying to think: what have been the most significant events in the history of journalism blogging?

Here’s what I have so far (thanks Mark Jones and Nigel Barlow):

• 1998: The Drudge Report breaks the Monica Lewinsky story. While Drudge denies the site is a blog, it demonstrated how the nimbleness of an online operation could scoop the mainstream media.
• 2001: September 11 attacks: while news websites collapse under the global demand, a network of blogs pass on news and lists of survivors
• 2002: Trent Lott forced to resign after apparently pro-segregationist statements made at an event and initially ignored by mainstream media, were picked up and fleshed out by bloggers
• 2003: Invasion of Iraq: Salam Pax, the ‘Baghdad Blogger’, posts updates from the city as it is bombed, providing a particular contrast to war reporters ‘embedded’ with the armed forces and demonstrating the importance of non-journalist bloggers
• 2003: Christopher Allbritton raises $15,000 through his blog Back-to-Iraq 3.0, to send him to report independently from the war, demonstrating the ability of blogs to financially support independent journalism (called the ‘tip-jar model’).
• 2004: Rathergate/Memogate: CBS’ 60 Minutes broadcast a story about George W. Bush’s National Guard service, and within minutes a section of the blogosphere mobilises to discredit the documents on which it is based. Dan Rather eventually resigns as a result.
• 2004: Asian Tsunami: more blogs mobilise around a disaster, of particular significance for video blogging
• 2005: July 7 Bombings, London: mobile phone image of passengers walking along Tube tunnel posted on MoBlog (although was first sent to The Sun), and goes global from there. A significant moment in moblogging.
• 2006: The Pulitzer Prize for Public Service cites the blog run by the New Orleans Times Picayune during Hurricane Katrina. The flexibility of blogs during a disaster which stopped printing presses and delivery trucks was driven home (h/t Bob Stepno).
• 2007: Talking Points Memo blog breaks story of US attorneys being fired across the country, demonstrating the power of involving readers in an investigation, and carrying it out in public (h/t Albert in the comments).
• 2007: Dave Winer wins his $2,000 bet (made in 2002) that blogs will rank higher than the New York Times for the top 5 news stories of 2007 (h/t Bob Stepno), demonstrating the importance of blogging in news distribution.
• 2007: Myanmar protests: the clampdown that followed democratic protests in the country was seen around the world thanks to blogging, moblogging, and social networking sites. Journalists were not allowed in the country. Even after the government cut off the internet, bloggers located outside the country continued to post material. (h/t Sandra Fish in comments)
• 2008: Peter Hain resigns over donations revealed by UK political blogger Guido Fawkes, who in 2006 broke a story on an affair by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott which he claimed lobby correspondents were sitting on
• 2008: Chinese Earthquake: a key moment for microblogging, as news of the earthquake spreads on Twitter (and Chinese IM service QQ) quicker than any official channels.
• 2008: Collapse of Northern Rock: BBC correspondent Robert Peston breaks one of the biggest stories of the year – not on TV, but on his blog.

What have I missed? This is a horribly Anglo-American list, too, so I’d particularly welcome similar moments from other countries.

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Part five of this draft book chapter looks at how blogs have changed the funding of journalism through their ability to attract reader donations, as well as other increasingly important sources such as licensing and foundations. I would welcome any corrections, extra information or comments.

Fundraising

Just as new media technologies are challenging publishing and distribution conventions, traditional business models have also been disrupted in a news industry which has, at least in the West, been facing declines in readership and advertising revenue for decades (Meyer, 2004). In this environment investigative journalism has been one of the first to suffer from cuts to staff and resources (Knightley, 2004; Outing, 2005; Freola, 2007), or to be targeted towards the more profitable areas of celebrity coverage.

In response to this decline in funding, blogs have offered a new way to finance investigative journalism.

In April 2003 former AP reporter Christopher Allbritton posted a notice on his site, Back-to-Iraq.com, asking for readers to donate money so he could cover the Iraq war. In response, 320 people donated $14,334 through the site. As Allbritton filed stories, donors were put on a ‘premium e-mail list’, receiving stories early – as well as extra reports and pictures. They also passed along story ideas and “occasionally berated him for overheated metaphors. “Readers were my editors,” he says” (Ante, 2003).

Freelance journalist David Appell repeated the experiment successfully when he asked readers of his blog to support him in investigating a sugar lobbying group (Bowman and Willis, 2003), while Talking Points Memo also relied on reader donations for its continuing existence before BlogAds allowed Josh Marshall to fund his operation through advertising (McDermott, 2007).

Readers of Firedoglake.com donated enough money to cover the travel expenses of six volunteer bloggers and $3,500 a month rent on a Washington apartment so that they could report on the trial of Lewis “Scooter” Libby (Shane, 2007). These donations of both money and time meant the site was able to draw on “more boots on the ground than any commercial news operation … more background, savvy and commitment to the case. And they dominate[d] the coverage of a big news event. Journalists themselves use[d] it to keep up and get their bearings.” (Rosen, 2007).

Jay Rosen added of the fundraising:

“What makes it possible are the people who gather at the site, and the falling cost for those people to meet up, realize their number, find a common mind, and when necessary pool their dollars to get their own correspondents to Washington … the cost for like-minded people to locate each other, share information, and work together is falling— dramatically. And so things unthinkable or impractical before might be quite doable now.” (Rosen, 2007).

Marshall Kirkpatrick (2007), writing specifically about video journalism, notes three models for financially sustaining investigative work: foundation support, viewer donation and licensing/advertising. Typically, the reality is a mix of all three. Alive in Baghdad and Alive in Mexico, for instance, aim to finance their work through licensing deals with mainstream media, but the team has also drawn on donations, subscriptions and prize money (Gannes, 2007). Democracy Now! is financed by foundations and viewer donations, while Collateral News, says Kirkpatrick, “appear [to] do commercial video production to support their investigative journalism”. Michael Yon, on the other hand, has added to reader donations by selling photographs online, and copies of a book (Yon, 2007).

Read the conclusion of this chapter here.

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