The Vancouver online publication The Tyee asked its readers to pay for its coverage of the British Columbia provincial election, and by mid-April 2009 the appeal had brought in almost $15,000 in donations. That was double the site’s monthly reporting budget, and more than its editor, David Beers, had expected when the appeal went out.
The timing was pointed. Canwest, which owned both Vancouver daily newspapers, the Vancouver Sun and The Province, was cutting costs and negotiating with creditors over a debt of CDN$3.7 billion. A small independent site was raising money for election reporting at the moment the incumbent papers were shrinking theirs.
The Tyee also asked donors which issues mattered most to them. After the first few days corruption topped the list, followed closely by the environment, housing, homelessness and poverty, and education — a reader-set agenda that came attached to the money.
Beers set out the reasoning behind the appeal in an interview, and was asked directly whether this was a plausible new funding model for journalism rather than a one-off. Reader-funded election coverage was an unusual experiment in 2009; membership and donation revenue is now a standard line in the accounts of independent news sites.