The newspaper was a pretty good idea.
So here's the problem: How do you gather and distribute the news?
Back in the Industrial Age, the newspaper was a pretty good idea.
You fed journalists' content into the front door, cranked up the presses, printed the newspapers, and then sent out newsboys who sold them on street corners while yelling, "Extra! Extra!"
Television and radio use the same model: it's a studio instead of a printing plant.
And in the Industrial Age, that model worked pretty well.
But in this Digital Age, don't you think we deserve a something better?
![Newsboys yelling "Extra! Extra!"]()
Yeah, it's time for CrowdNews®
CrowdNews is [re]making the news. We do three things to make the news better for both the audience and the journalist.
We connect our audience directly to the journalists they support: no middleman of The New York Times, FOX News, or CNN. Just a direct connection between audience and journalist.
Our audience decides what news is valuable to them, not Big Media. Our audience members get exactly the news they want, on the topics they care about, from the journalists they support.
We make sure our journalists get paid for their work. Our journalist members get paid each and every time their work is consumed. How else can quality journalism survive?
![]()
Why pay for news?
We hear it all the time: "Why should I pay for news when I get it for free?"
We believe that you get what you pay for.
How much of that free news is really a waste of your time? How much of that free news do you value? The truth is, most free news is worth exactly that: nothing.
People pay for things they value all the time. We pay for cable television even though broadcast TV is free. We pay for streaming music while there are great free radio stations. We contribute to NPR and PBS, and pay for FOX News and CNN through our cable bill.
We pay for things that we value.
And you deserve news that you value.
So how does it work?
One of our core beliefs at CrowdNews is that journalists should have the freedom to define the life of a story without it being
time-boxed, 24-hour-news-cycled, or
truncated.
We think journalists, to explore and accurately report on our world, must be given the opportunity to tell a story in its fullest.
The Newstream®
CrowdNews introduces the
Newstream.
Newstreams give our member journalists the freedom to define the life of a story.
A Newstream consists of components of information and content that comprise a story, presented over time.
We call each component of a Newstream a
Dispatch. A Dispatch can be a text article, a video clip, a map, an audio file, or other media.
A complete Newstream might be one dispatch, or 30. It might all be presented in one day, or over the course of a year. It might take the form of text, or video, or audio, or a combination. (CrowdNews is
media agnostic.)
Our audience subscribes to specific Newstreams, not to CrowdNews itself. When you subscribe to a Newstream, you support that particular journalist. The majority of your support for that Newstream will go to the journalist, not CrowdNews.
We are dedicated to the survival of quality journalism.
![]()
Journalists: take charge of your career.
CrowdNews empowers the journalist to take charge of his or her career. Our member journalists decide what stories to explore, what media to use, how to present the story.
Our member journalists create stories of value. Newstreams of value.
You do the reporting. We'll do the rest.
We think it's something in the DNA of a journalist, that need to find out and inform: to risk your life in a war zone, to dig into corporate corruption, to investigate childhood disease, to celebrate a community garden.
Reporting is in your DNA. Marketing and sales? That's our job.
How often does a great piece of content, maybe even your content, get re-Tweeted, or re-blogged, or posted 1000's of times around the web and the author receives nothing in return? We don't think that's right.
We're building a marketplace for your content. We're building the tools to market and sell your content. We're building a platform so you get paid each and every time your content is consumed.
You do the reporting and we'll do the rest.
![]()
It's the future of news.
Yeah, we’re building something HUGE here: the future of the news, not just an app.
For the past 2 years I’ve poured my own money into building CrowdNews.
Bootstrapping our vision has taken us far: we’ve built prototypes, we're connected to thousands of people on our mailing lists and social media, we're working with journalists to test our ideas, we’ve gotten cool press, and most importantly, we’ve got a great TEAM of dedicated people who are donating their time and energy for the vision.
And our small TEAM has accomplished a lot!
But we've reached the limit of what we can do alone.
Now we need you to join us and support us, so together we can take CrowdNe.ws to the next stage.
Specifically, we need to hire developers, designers, and others who share our vision of the future of the news.
Support the future of news. Support our Indiegogo campaign. Together we can launch CrowdNews, and [re]make the news.
How your contributions build CrowdNews.
Yeah, we need developers and designers to help us bring CrowdNews to you, as fast as we can. And that's where your money goes.
When we reach our goal, we’ll be able to hire 2-3 dedicated and passionate developers to build out a first release of CrowdNews. With your support, we could be [re]making the news in 3 months.
Of course, the more you support our campaign, the more we will build. Our Stretch Goals include Notifications, Recommendations, Collaboration Tools, Dynamic Pricing…
![]()
We're a small team with a huge vision.
Our core team has years of entrepreneurial, technology development, and business experience.
I'm Michael Wheeler, Founder and Chief Visionary of CrowdNews. I've been an entrepreneur for over 20 years, creating my first company, Wheeler Design Group, a marketing and design firm in Boston, in 1989, and in Paris, France, in 1994. I've designed, managed, and published many web sites, blogs, online magazines, online stores, and social networks.
My years of building businesses, publishing online magazines, founding social networks, and creating online stores has given me a unique set of experiences and insights.
In 2012 I launched CrowdNews, Inc to [re]make the news.
Matt Drayer is our Chief Technology Officer and Visionary. He has deep experience creating online customer-facing technology platforms for a number of leading technology firms. He's worked many long nights and weekends to help build CrowdNews.
You can learn more about our team at
CrowdNews TEAM.
![]()
Hey, you ROCK!
Thanks for taking the time to learn about CrowdNews and what we're building. I hope you join us and become part of our TEAM.
You can help [re]make the news by contributing generously to our campaign. You can also help by SPREADING THE WORD to EVERYONE YOU KNOW!
Use your email contacts, your Twitter followers, your Facebook friends. Tumble CrowdNews, Pin us, LinkedIn us, whatever social media you love, tell everyone you know about our campaign.
We've build a special page on CrowdNews just so you can share! Tell everyone you know about Share CrowdNews (http://crowdne.ws/indiegogoShare1.html) to join our TEAM.
And don't forget you can use all the built in share tools right here on Indiegogo!
There's more about our vision on the CrowdNews Blog.
![]()
Join us!
Support us!
Be part of CrowdNews!
Together We Can Reboot the News!
Thanks for your help, your support, and your belief in our passion!
Special thanks to these journalists for their insight and feedback
Tom Ashbrook (WBUR)
Alessandra Bianchi (Inc. Magazine, Boston Globe)
DC Denison (Boston Globe)
Nan Goldberg (Book Critic)
Portland Helmich (Video Producer/Writer/On-Camera Host)
Jeff Hoffman (Digital Media Producer, Squashhouse Media)
Susan Johnston (Business Writer)
Llewellyn King (Exec. Producer, Host, "White House Chronicle”)
David Pakman (Television Host)
Tom Salemi (Bureau Chief, Elsevier Business Intelligence)
Mark Steele (WGBH, Squashhouse Media)
Jim Vaiknoras (Director of Photography, Newburyport Magazine)
Many thanks to Jeff Hoffman and Mark Steele of Squashhouse Media for their amazing work on our video. They really went above and beyond. Contact them at Squashhouse Media. Thanks to Steffen Leidel, @steffenleidel on Twitter, for photo usage in our video.
So what do I say here?!?
CrowdNews® and Newstream® are registered trademarks of CrowdNews, Inc
