PBS: What Hopkins and Obama have in common

It's "crowdfunding" -- getting tiny donations online to help fund a cause or venture, blogger Mark Glaser says today in a new post on PBS MediaShift. "The question is whether crowdfunding can work on a larger scale to help fund traditional journalism, which is being hit by the twin storms of readership and ad declines at newspapers and the economic recession," Glaser says. The money paragraphs on yours truly:

Another blogger that recently started a crowdfunding drive is Jim Hopkins, a former USA Today reporter who writes the Gannett Blog as a watchdog to the newspaper chain and media conglomerate. For the past month, Hopkins has been asking for $5 subscriptions from readers via PayPal, and raised nearly $1,500. But he had one particularly vexing problem: Most of his readers want to remain anonymous because they work for Gannett, so using PayPal would reveal who they are to him. To get around that problem, Hopkins set up a post office box to accept cash from them in the mail.

Hopkins told me he is trying to make money from Google AdSense ads, and is using online video to strengthen his appeal for funds.

"I had read that video is a good way to make an appeal because it's more emotional," he told me. "Until recently, my readers had not heard my voice or had a sense of who I was as a person. Just last week I figured out a cheap way to produce video, and people's reactions have been interesting. They said I might have come across as a mean, anti-management person, but the video made me seem more like a real human being. So if I used it as a fundraising tool it could result in more money coming in."

Earlier: Poynter asks how journalism can make money

To buy a voluntary $5 subscription, please use the "Donate" tool in the green sidebar, upper right. Prefer snail mail? Send cash/checks payable to: Jim Hopkins, 584 Castro St. #823, San Francisco, Calif., 94114-2594.