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Noteworthy offers new funding model for investigations


Public asked to indicate what are the stories they would like to see probed


Journalist Ken Foxe has teamed with TheJournal.ie on a platform they hope will offer a new model for funding investigative journalism that the public wants to see. A beta version of the site, Noteworthy, has been online at www.noteworthy.ie since April, and accepting submissions from the public. Noteworthy asks the public to tell them about


the stories they want to see investigated, and use those ideas to create proposals, determining how best to tell those stories in depth, and how much they will cost. Noteworthy then publishes the proposals, asking the public to fund their team of reporters to research and tell those stories.


The initiative raised more than €8,000 in its


first week, enabling them to fund seven projects. Noteworthy is also supported by Google’s Digital News Innovation Fund.


“So far it’s worked quite well,” Ken said. Ken is editor of Noteworthy, working with Adrian Acosta, chief executive, Journal Media; Peter Bodkin, special projects and investigations editor at TheJournal.ie; Barry O’Sullivan, developer; and Palash Somani, web designer.


Completed Noteworthy investigations are published online at TheJournal.ie and noteworthy.ie.


Stories published so far cover a broad range, including: Meningitis C vaccination rates of ‘critical concern’ as anti-vax sentiment pushes take-up rates below targets; Not so fast: Only 10 of 27 developments given special strategic planning have begun construction; and ‘Nobody seems to care’: Why some children face years of waiting for ‘early intervention’.


Ken said the project also tries to create close connections with readers.


“If they have issues, local or national, that


aren’t getting the attention they deserve we’ll try to turn them into proposals,” Ken said. “We


know more in-depth investigative journalism is a difficult proposition for a lot of media organisations at the moment because the old funding models are somewhat broken, and they don’t lend themselves to investing a lot of time or resources into stories. “It’s something everyone is dealing with,” he


said. Noteworthy has been receiving a lot of story suggestions, and the team determines which are suitable to become a proposal. Some may also need some tweaking – the ideas may be too vague, for example, or too small a scale.


Funding models Noteworthy offers two funding models –


crowd-funding for specific proposals and a general fund for projects that perhaps cannot be made public or are otherwise unsuitable for crowd-funding. As Noteworthy develops, they would like to


create work for freelance journalists and look at partnering with regional newspapers and other local media organisations. “If there were issues they felt they didn’t have


the resources or time to get stuck into, maybe we could come up with an arrangement to work on things together,” Ken said. “Those things are for the future.”


Ken can be contacted at ken@noteworthy.ie.


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