Indie journalism fueled by reader donations

Interesting things going on in Maine. Freelance journalist-blogger David Appel made an appeal to his readers for him to pursue an investigative story. On first blush, it's highly unorthodox for a journalist to ask readers to pony up money for a piece of journalism. On second blush, isn't that what newspaper publishers do every day?

Here's the story from David, from Blogads, and from kpaul. Excerpt from Blogads:

Wednesday, journalist/blogger David Appel pitched his blog readers to support a story filled with "big politics, big science, and big money."

David has been investigating a sugar lobbying group's attempt to get Congress to kill funding for the WHO, which offended the sugar daddies. "Usually, at this point I'd query editors of various magazines and, usually, get assigned an 800 word story or so, paying anywhere from $400 to $1,000 or more."

Instead, he asked 40 readers to donate $5 each, so he can publish the story on his blog. $200 "is a fraction of what I'd usually get for this type of work, but I want to try it for the idea of it all." David is "a full-time freelance science journalist living in southern Maine... has appeared in Scientific American, Salon, New Scientist, Nature, Audubon, the Boston Globe, Discover, Psychology Today, and many other publications."

Blogs redraw the cultural map

More from today's Sunday NY Times:

As Google Goes, So Goes the Nation

A New York State of Blog (a profile of Nick Denton's Gawker)

Dating a Blogger, Reading All About It. Excerpt:

While personal blogs have been around for years, their proliferation has caused a wrinkle in the social fabric among people in their teens, 20's and early 30's. Inundated with bloggers, they are finding that every clique now has its own Matt Drudge, someone capable of instantly turning details of their lives into saucy Internet fare.

"It's like all your friends are reporters now," said Douglas Rushkoff, a blogger and author of "Media Virus" and other books about the impact of technology on society.

In the rush to publish, many bloggers are running headlong into some of the problems conventionally published memoirists know too well: hurt feelings, newly wary friends and relatives, and the occasional inflamed employer.

"All writing is a form of negotiation between the reader and writer over what constitutes responsibility," said David Weinberger, author of "Small Pieces Loosely Joined," a book about the Internet. "Because blogs are a new form, the negotiation can easily go awry."

Mr. Weinberger said the confessional nature of many blogs had "redrawn the line between what's private and public."

The most curious factoid in the article was the statement by Nick Denton that there are "three million active blogs online." But Nick didn't say that. As he notes, only about 20 percent of those 3 million blogs are active. The Times will likely not publish a correction, and other media outlets will doubtless now pick up on the wildly inaccurate 3 million blogs figure.

Citizen journalism in South Korea

Dan Gillmor is just back from South Korea and files this report in today's San Jose Merc: A new brand of journalism is taking root in South Korea. Excerpt:

OhmyNews is transforming the 20th century's journalism-as-lecture model, where organizations tell the audience what the news is and the audience either buys it or doesn't, into something vastly more bottom-up, interactive and democratic.

The influence of OhmyNews is substantial, and expanding. It's credited with having helped elect the nation's current president, Roh Moo Hyun, who ran as a reformer. Roh granted his first post-election interview to the publication, snubbing the three major conservative newspapers that have dominated the print-journalism scene for years.

Even taxi drivers who don't have time for newspapers have heard of OhmyNews. The site draws millions of visitors daily.

How Wal-Mart shapes cultural tastes

The Sunday NY Times has a story on the impact of Wal-Mart and the other big discount chains on American popular culture. Excerpt:

Music executives say the chains have helped turn country performers like the Dixie Chicks, Toby Keith and Faith Hill into superstars. And major book publishers say the growth of the mass merchandisers has helped produce a string of best sellers by conservative authors like Bernard Goldberg, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage and Bill O'Reilly.

The growing clout of Wal-Mart and the other big discount chains ó they now often account for more than 50 percent of the sales of a best-selling album, more than 40 percent for a best-selling book, and more than 60 percent for a best-selling DVD ó has bent American popular culture toward the tastes of their relatively traditionalist customers.

"They have obviously reached the Bush-red audience in a big way," said Laurence J. Kirshbaum, chairman of AOL Time Warner's books unit ...