New Worldcrunch project to take to Kickstarter

There have been many examples of new journalism projects which have taken to platforms like Kickstarter to engage the crowd in the initial funding stages.

The latest to announce plans for crowdfunding is Worldcrunch, which translates articles from publishers around the world into English. Worldcrunch launched in December 2010.

Worldcrunch works with news outlets across the world, translating and distributing content from titles including Kommersant in Russia, Caixin Media in China, Die Welt in Germany, Le Monde in France and La Stampa in Italy.

Publishers can purchase content directly through Worldcrunch, and the translated articles are available via the New York Times Syndicate. Worldcrunch's website also offers content to its own readers via a metered paywall which launched earlier this year.

The model allows readers to access 15 Worldcrunch articles a month before they will face the paywall to continue to access "premium translations". Content which appears in its curation channel Mondo remains out of the paywall and can therefore continue to be accessed beyond 15 articles.

Now Worldcrunch wants to launch Worldcrunch Impact, which aims to build on the "amazing relationships" which the outlet has developed with its source media partners, and put a spotlight on coverage specifically relating to global development, as Garrett Goodman, who works in business development and innovation at Worldcrunch, told Journalism.co.uk.

"We'd like to leverage those relationships to present a new pool of content, and the idea is that we can provide solutions-based journalism to help actually talk about global development issues and we can collect really interesting and innovative solutions that have been covered by our partners.

"Right now it's all hiding behind the language barrier and we know that given the relationships that we already have with these source partners, we can pull these really interesting articles around a single topic each month and then present that in a new and innovative way as well."

The project will be launched on Kickstarter later this month, with the raised funds to be split between the editorial process of translating or producing original stories, and developing the technology to support a "map navigation" to present the stories. The exact funding target is not known at the time of writing.

"So you can hop around the world and see how different areas are addressing these needs that the whole world is facing," Goodman explained, adding that this project would remain in front of the website's paywall, like its Mondo channel.

"We want it to have maximum impact so we will definitely make it free for the benefit of everyone," he said.

"So we think it can actually align quite nicely with the idea of crowdfunding and especially with the Kickstarter crowd which I think is potentially very interested in these ideas of how technology can help improve education, how innovations in urban planning are making our cities more liveable and the third one is about agricultural reform, so we're looking at the organic revolution and it's benefits.

"So we've identified three topics to begin with and that's what the Kickstarter funding will go towards: three monthly editions each focused on an individual topic."

Once the project has been established Worldcrunch will look to sponsorship to support the ongoing costs.

As for the paywall, at the International Journalism Festival last month Goodman also discussed the potential of paywall partnerships, as a possible revenue opportunity for digital publishers, and an idea Worldcrunch is considering.

"We're talking with a couple of different publications about the idea of a paywall partnership," he told Journalism.co.uk, "because right now in the States especially local newspapers are really struggling to differentiate their premium offers from the competition.

"We think that partnering with a great world news source could be an awesome member benefit for them, and mutually beneficial."

See the video below filmed by the International Journalism Festival of the event's 'business models 2.0: beyond advertising' session, in which Goodman took part.

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