Help Scoop 'Open The Election' : The Open News Project

Project 2017-02-27 12:53:49 +1300

Update 11 April: Frequently Asked Questions RE: Scoop Finances & Licences

Scoop co-founder Alastair Thompson has provided two updates in the form fo FAQ Posts with answers on the Scoop Website. Click each question to see the answer.

APRIL 11th - An Important Message To Professional Users Of Scoop 

1. Who is a professional user of Scoop?
2. What is Scoop's Ethical Paywall?
3. Who is required to pay to use Scoop?
4. Who is not required to pay to use Scoop?
5. How many professional Scoop users are there?
6. How many Scoop contributors are there?
7. Why don't you just charge organisations for submitting press releases?
8. What are Scoop's financial circumstances?
9. What will Scoop do with additional money?

 APRIL 2nd - An Appeal To All Friends Of Scoop - This Is Not A Drill

1. Why don't you just cut costs & stem the losses?
2. Why should Scoop receive public support at all?
3. Why can't you support yourselves with commercially derived revenue?
4. Spinoff.co.nz and NewsRoom.co.nz are getting money, why aren't you?
5. How is the Ethical Paywall going then?
6. Ok then, but what about now? How big is the shortfall now?
7. Ahem, how big is the shortfall?

Update 28 March: 2 Million "Ads For Good" Collective award added.

We know how hard it is for small community based campaigns to make an impression and get their message heard in an election year so we want to help amplify their voices. When we reach our PledgeMe target of $30k, Scoop will give away 2 million banner adverts on Scoop.co.nz to deserving election related advertising campaigns to be delivered between May 1st and September’s election day. The value of the adverts to be given away is roughly equal to the funding target for this PledgeMe campaign.  Find out more here.

Help Scoop supercharge our election journalism. 

Help Scoop to 'open the news' this election cycle through a participatory, citizen powered and open licensed news project in 2017. We are building a groundswell of readers and citizens to help Scoop implement this more open approach to independent media in collaboration with expert freelance journalists and editors.

Scoop plans to collaboratively shape an independent news agenda with YOU using exciting open citizen engagement tools and events to crowdsource ideas and find solutions. We will then collaborate with leading freelance journalists to produce high quality, open licensed multimedia journalism covering the issues that matter most to you. 

Scoop has been a longstanding champion of democracy and open media since 1999 - we have provided a non-partisan platform for coverage of government issues including the past six national elections. We are now seeking funds to retain everything you already love about Scoop and to make it even better through this innovative open news project. 

If you value open and independent media then please support us so we can implement these fresh ideas and rejuvenate Scoop by opening up our approach to election journalism in 2017. 

You can now have your say here in our first HiveMind engagement on which issues Scoop should cover this year

Why open the election 

We think too much political coverage these days tends to focus on ‘the game’ of politics and play into the spin and the all too often superficial debates framed by the major political parties. As we saw in the recent US elections this leads to a media focus on personality politics and a proliferation of clickbait and even fake news. This situation creates a serious deficit in our democracy as our media lacks a focus on the solutions and policy which enables people to participate fully in the debate or to vote meaningfully. 

We believe the Media should more closely serve the needs and interests of the people. This project seeks to provide opportunities for everyone to participate in open and reciprocal debate about the issues and policies that matter to them. 

We believe this will result in news content produced through this project being framed more constructively and drawing attention to innovative policy solutions created by and supported by citizens from all sides of the debate.

How we will open the election 

 By donating to this campaign you will be helping Scoop to open the elections by:

1. Listening to the community to discover what themes you most want us to cover. (We are starting this agenda co-creation phase now - have your say here. 
2. Consulting with the community on these issues using our new HiveMind platform for collective intelligence gathering and developing tools such as the Election Reactor project we ran last election.
3. Investigating these issues in depth through a collaboration between leading freelance journalists, data journalists and our expert independent editorial panel. 
4. Producing innovative multimedia content such as data visualisation, audio, video, photography, easy to follow explainers and good old fashioned political reporting.  
5. Distributing content widely through Scoop.co.nz and open licensed releases of content and data in traditional and new media channels as well as seeking co-publishing arrangements with other publishers. 

How to Support the Open News Project 

We are looking for support in three areas: 

1. Individuals - Pledge and get involved in the discussions about what matters. (Receive special opening the election email newsletter updates (weekly or twice weekly) as well as other rewards such as a book or a Scoop Custom Notebook)

2. Sponsor Organisations - Pledge to sponsor the 'Opening the Election' campaign and/or a HiveMind citizen engagement discussion. (You also receive a complimentary Scoop Commercial Use License including daily news intelligence email updates for your region and key sectors)

3. Open Election Ambassadors - Help us spread the word and promote transparency and democracy in this election campaign.

 

What we need to open the election 

We need the following as a minimum to do this ambitious project justice:

$10,000 to build and implement technology tools to open the election

$10,000 to fund quality journalism on issues that matter to you

$10,000 for Scoop production, publishing and editorial costs 

We're seeking a minimum of $30,000 to open the election this year – but if we can raise $50,000 we will be able to secure more top quality freelancers and create far more content and exciting engagement opportunities and events.

This amount will enable Scoop to implement a responsive website design so that our site will be user friendly across all device sizes and to streamline our internal publishing system. This funding will also enable us to form strong alliances with ngos, campaigning orgs and even other publishing organisations to deliver exciting election coverage and provide ways for citizens to get involved in the discussion. 

We also hope to host a non-partisan policy transparency platform for citizens to ask questions directly to campaigning politicians and evaluate the responses. 

This funding will also provide a buffer for Scoop to allow us to continue transitioning towards a sustainable commercial licensing based revenue stream driven by our innovative ethical paywall model.  

Please pledge now and help Scoop open the election in 2017!

Please also add a facebook comment below to help us spread the message and ensure we meet the target. 

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