

Beacon (YC W14) Offers A New Approach To Crowdfunding Journalism - zmitri
http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/12/beacon-y-combinator-launch/

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slvv
Obviously you're focusing on journalists now, but there are other groups of
content creators who might be into your product; I see cartoonists and
photographers are mentioned in the article. I wonder whether this model would
be useful to young academics, too - especially those who are moving to careers
outside of academia but might still like to conduct and share research.
Publishing in academic journals is (supposed to be) a way to get your research
out there, and peer review does matter. But academic journals don't pay their
authors, and often have very limited audiences. It seems like Beacon could
help solve those problems. Maybe another interested population for you in the
future!

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unignorant
Yeah, I'd second your thoughts about academic contributors.

I know a few HCI grad students who are interested in sharing their work in
more informal kinds of venues (I'm one of them). Sure, conference papers are
nice, but almost no one reads them. A lot of research in our field would
appeal to a more general audience.

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SandersAK
Yes! I think it could work awesome for academia - particularly in a format
where the value transaction is really transparent and well documented.

You could even imagine a time where citing sources actually trickles money
back to them to reflect their value to a new study.

If you know grad students, I'd love to chat with them: adrian@beaconreader.com

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lukasm
I've given a lot of though about current state of journalism and my conclusion
was that the current model is wrong for two reasons 1\. conflict of interests
2\. lack of transparency

@1 There are two main sources of capital for journalists - government or
companies that buy ads. The problem is when they can put pressure to not write
of unjust acts that may conflict with their interests. The solution is to
provide founding from large enough group of people when there is no dominant
subgroup. Models has to be highly distributed to avoid bribing users[1]. There
needs to be upper limit of funding e.g. 99$ or 10%[2] to dilute influence of a
single user. Even better for a 5$ a month I can get credit which I can
allocate.

@2 Log everything. Brutal transparency. That's the only way I can think of.

So you're going to make something people want, right? :) I want to be able to
vote what is important for me. I want to post an issue and let other judge if
it's worth investigating.

[1] I'm amazed how often pattern of distributed models occurs and works very
well (Bitcoin, Git etc.). [2] That may have a similar effect as Twitter's 140
chars limit

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SandersAK
Yep, you've kinda nailed it. We're moving towards that on Beacon. But right
now our primary focus is on helping writers convert their existing readership
into paying subscribers.

As the content offering as a whole becomes more robust, you'll start seeing
more of the effects you're looking for.

It's really simple and old fashioned: You think certain information or
perspectives are valuable, you pay for them.

We're just updating the underlying tech and user experience to modern times ;)

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SandersAK
cofounder of Beacon here - would love to get grilled by the HN denizens and
get feedback about what we're doing!

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frankdenbow
Do you plan on helping journalists distribute their content outside of the
main Beacon site? I imagine some have their own following but others want to
use the site to help gain readership on/off your platform.

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SandersAK
Maybe in the future but the reality is that the last 10 years have been
focused on distribution of content as the primary goal. We're focused on
monetization, and helping creators make more money and delivering more value
for readers who support them.

