An email arrives from blogger/journalist Simon Owens, alerting us to a piece he's written on American music magazine Paste. (Dave Lee apparently received a very similar email...)
You won't have heard of Simon Owens, and you won't have heard of Paste magazine, but the story's an interesting one, and here's why.
Earlier this month, Paste was in dire straits - recession biting, falling revenues, the usual story. But rather than lay off staff or fold, it hit on a novel solution - appealing to the generosity of its readers.
In a heartfelt plea launching the 'Campaign to Save Paste', the magazine threw itself on the mercy of its 200,000 subscribers:
We appreciate all of your support so far—everyone who’s subscribed, given a gift, or even read a story online or opened a newsletter. It’s all enabled us to make it this far. Now, we humbly ask you to consider giving a little more.
It doesn’t take much. Every little bit helps and you can be a part of continuing our efforts to help you find signs of life in music, film and culture. If $1 (yes, one dollar) came in from everyone on our e-mail lists (or $10 from 10% or $100 from 1%), we’ll reach our goal and emerge from this recession as a stronger magazine and website.
It's an astonishingly bold approach, and one which has apparently paid dividends - they've raised more than $175,000 so far, well on the way to their $300,000 target.
It's humiliating, of course, for popular, once-profitable magazines to have to quite literally beg for their life. And it's certainly not a sustainable business model for the future of journalism.
But for a one-off cash injection to keep a much-loved publication afloat, to help it weather the recession and somehow figure out a long-term solution - well, charity might just be the answer.
1 comments:
Why is it hailed as a so called innovative way of raising funds, even though it is common begging? And yet, when the blogosphere leave DONATION buttons on their blogs, it is called desperate....I fail to see how it is innovative....
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