ColumbiaMissourian

About

The Columbia Missourian is a community news organization directed by professional editors and staffed by Missouri School of Journalism students who do the reporting, design, copy editing, information graphics, photography and multimedia.

The Missourian and Vox recently launched Kachingle.

It’s an experiment in what the founder Cynthia Typaldos calls “crowdfunding.” That is, Kachingle is a way to contribute something out of your pocket — voluntarily — for the news coverage you like. You might think of it as the tip jar at your local coffee shop.

You would throw a couple of quarters in the Missourian jar, wouldn’t you? A dozen dimes to Vox wouldn’t hurt, would it? Kachingle is a way to tell the world that you support the journalism done on our local sites, or on any other site around the world that is a Kachingle member, in an easy way.

Typaldos pitched the idea more than two years ago at a Reynolds Journalism Institute conference here. Her startup celebrates its first birthday this month.

Typaldos wants to create a new social norm for news reading.

Almost everyone tips at a restaurant, and in this country there’s a 15 percent to 20 percent range that is generally accepted (assuming good service and good food, of course).
No one forces us to tip. We do it anyway.
Typaldos believes that kind of in-person behavior can translate to the Web.
“People want to support the stuff they love,” she says.

Not surprisingly, she doesn’t see much of a future for metered systems at news sites. Newspapers such as The New York Times and our own Columbia Daily Tribune are moving to a more print-like model of daily, weekly or monthly subscriptions.

But I don’t see a subscriptions vs. crowdfunding competition here. They are just two of many attempts in finding ways to support journalism.

And, at least so far, the Kachingle member sites aren’t exactly rolling in dough. Think tens of dollars in contributions, not hundreds or thousands.

I have small goals for Kachingle.
If your contributions help pay for more public records requests or fund a new camera for the newsroom, that’s success.

If they help send a staff photographer to one more MU basketball away game, we all win.
(Some of our MU students already have benefited. A team from a joint business-and-journalism class is taking on Kachingle marketing as a project.)

I can hear those coins dropping in the tip jar now.

Tom Warhover

Note: Tom Warhover is the executive editor of the Missourian. Contact him by e-mail at warhovert@missouri.edu or by phone at (573) 882-5734.

First kachingled on:
Feb 09, 2011

Photo Credit:

Medallion