Press release
November 18, 2015
PRESS START: Crowdfunding Stories that Matter
Crowdfunding platform Press Start was launched today to raise money for independent journalism in countries where the press cannot report freely -- a goal all the more crucial as media freedom sits at its lowest level in a decade.
The site was introduced via a Kickstarter campaign, potentially revolutionizing the way the best and bravest reporters are funded in the developing world and countries in transition.
More than six billion people – most of the world’s population – live in countries where journalists remain muzzled. Internet freedom is also in decline, and independent publishing faces increasingly sophisticated forms of control and censorship.
The free flow of information has never been more vital, but crippling political and financial pressures mean independent media struggle to survive, to produce quality journalism, or even to pay their reporters – no matter how talented and courageous they are.
Press Start is the first global crowdfunding platform specifically created to fill that gap.
The site will connect journalists seeking to report the stories important to their communities with people around the world who believe in a free press and appreciate its importance to democracy. These journalists put their careers and lives at risk to do their work, and they need the public’s attention and support to hold the powerful to account.
"Through the journalism training programs we've run over the past 20 years, we hear the same thing over and over again," Press Start Founder Jeremy Druker said. “That even the smartest, bravest reporters, with all the skills in the world, still can’t find the funding to do the journalism they know is needed – funding that is often hard to come by in poor, restrictive societies.”
Past experiments in crowdfunding journalism have usually limited their ambitions to raising funds for a single project.
But Press Start will raise funds for a series of articles spread over several months, offering some stability and a lifeline for journalists working under difficult circumstances to practice the watchdog journalism so necessary for democratic development.
“Press Start allows people from across the world to make a real impact by enabling local journalists to report on stories that are important to their communities and that would otherwise go untold,” said Gary Regenstreif, chairman of Press Start’s advisory board and former editor at large at Reuters. “Whether donors are in New York or Stockholm, Frankfurt or Tokyo, they can derive satisfaction from the fact that they are helping to inform those who may be in the dark and, in the process, strengthening democracies."
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Press Start is an initiative of Transitions (TOL), one of Central Europe’s leading journalism trainers and a Czech-registered, nonprofit organization. Founded in 1999, TOL has implemented dozens of journalism training and freedom of expression projects in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. The organization also operates a popular news site on the post-communist region, Transitions Online, which was a founding member of the Guardian’s New East Network.
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