Hi Steemians! I was recently introduced to Steemit through a contact in the Bitcoin community here in Montreal (I'm British but recently moved here). I'm a freelance journalist with a strong interest in technology, and spend a lot of time thinking about crowdfunding and micro-payments as a way to fund independent journalism.
The problem
Though there's no need for me to write a primer on how the media works, the basic situation is that with most mainstream publications editors are the gatekeepers of content - deciding which pitches to commission and which to reject - whilst above them sit the owners of the magazines, TV channels, etc., who have ultimate say in what kind of agenda the outlet should promote.
Besides that, with the switch towards free content on the internet and decline in revenue for almost all media outlets, there's a looming crisis in the funding of journalism, and pressure to deliver value for money in terms of the time to produce vs traffic generated for a given piece of content means that in-depth, investigative reporting is more and more difficult to fund, whereas clickbait listicles and endless re-posting of essentially the same story across different media is becoming the norm.
The solution?
In light of the above I'm really excited to have discovered Steemit, and would love to be part of the conversation amongst the community about 'commissioning' and funding high quality journalism. (For example: as a freelancer it's viable for me to produce original, heavily-reported stories for Steemit, but only if I can be reasonably sure of the ultimate payoff; without that kind of certainty it's difficult to justify the time invested).
So my first question is, what would a commissioning process look like (and is there interest in it)? Could the community vote in advance on which stories to produce on the understanding that writers delivering on those assignments would be appropriately upvoted and rewarded?
Really looking forward to hearing everybody's thoughts. Go Steemit!
I upvoted You
I don't think you can expect any kind of guarantees for payment on here, it's more a matter of the community recognizing the work put in after the fact, and if the economic model of Steemit works as intended, then the stakeholders (whales) will have an incentive to reward high quality original content which I'd assume your type of investigative journalism would fall under.
That said, it couldn't hurt to solicit feedback in advance by asking the community to give their opinions or votes perhaps on what kind of stories they'd be most interested in.
Looking forward to reading your contributions.
Yes indeed - being able to navigate between the need for some kind of payment security, but also respecting and working within the dynamics of the Steemit community, is exactly what I'm hoping to understand. Would love to talk and think more about how voting on stories to cover might work. Thanks for your feedback!
Leave any expectation behind. The only focus is to act at your maximum potential and to give the best you have. Valuable content will be rewarded if you don't give up after few good posts. Myself I made a post today and minutes after the site went down for about an our. All my work was in vain. But it doesn't matter. I will make another one and another one and so on.
Good luck to You and welcome to Steemit.
Upvoted
Welcome to Steemit. Good Luck on your posts. Here is my introduction if you want to check it out.
https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@marsresident/verification-image-bitcoin-oracle-hinduism-and-social-media
Interesting ideas. I believe that, right now, commissioned work would be based too much on trust, not sure if there's a way to track and garantee payments and contracts, but you could develop a whole new social network just based on this idea. :)
I cannot believe I missed this first time around! Welcome! Your new home awaits!
Besides upvotes, some authors could also ask for donations. Investigative journalism might take some time and resources to do, so maybe just ask some sum of steem dollars before you start working on it? Depending on how much you get, you can estimate is it worth doing. If you don't get enough, you can always return the money.