http://ow.ly/3qcFr
[excerpt]
As news organisations make cutbacks, photojournalists, many of whom are freelancers, have been struggling to find enough commissions. Co-founded by Tina Ahrens, a photo editor and consultant, Karim Ben Khelifa, a photojournalist and Fanuel Dewever, a business consultant, http://www.emphas.is/ is seeking a new funding model for photojournalism, an often costly and time-consuming trade.
Ben Khelifa explained to the Editors Weblog that his inspiration for the initiative came when he was pitching an ambitious project that he wanted to carry out, but despite the fact that everybody he spoke to showed great interest in the project, he couldn't find funding. He had the realization that there was a serious demand for photojournalism, and that if media organisations weren't prepared to fund it, maybe the public would be. The public, rather than editors, would take on the role of information gatekeepers.
Crowd-funding for news has already been experimented with, the best-known example being Spot.Us, a start up based in California's Bay Area, founded by David Cohn with help from the Knight Foundation. Ben Khelifa only discovered Spot.Us after he started researching for his project, however.
