Matter and What it Means 

For Digital Journalism

The decline in journalistic readership combined with the emphasis placed on stories being profitable has led to an inevitable gap in long form journalism. This gap is primarily due to the lack of investigative work being produced, as long-form narrative style articles are not cost efficient to fund. However where there is a gap there are those with the aspirations to supply the demand. Non-profit companies such as ProPublica and MinnPost have aimed to provide news stories that dive deep into issues regarding democracy, politics, and citizenship. Both companies have shown moderate to high level of success which indicates a demand for the stories that matter to citizens. More recently the journalistic company Matter successfully launched after an overwhelmingly positive Kickstarter campaign. Matter was founded on the principle that independent journalism is capable of filling the gap left by mainstream media and focuses specifically on long form stories about technology and science. The successful launch of Matter is an important step forward for the revival of investigative journalism as it demonstrates the public demand for articles that matter. 

From the beginning of the century, news corporations have been plagued by cutbacks and financial stress. The rise of the Internet swept away what advertisement money remained and those companies that did not succumb to financial bankruptcy, were forced to seek out buyers. Immediately following the buyout of almost every major media outlet by a handful of major corporations followed substantial cuts in both jobs and product quantity. “Most of this decline occurred between 2001 and 2010, when the industry lost 25 percent of its workers ”. This decline was following a decade where journalist jobs were cut from “60,000 in 1992 to around 40,000 in 2009 ”. The trend is clear but the repercussions do not cease at a shortage of jobs. With fewer journalists available to produce content, nearly every media outlet shares the same content on a global scale. This leads to an inevitable dilution of content; of which often has no real meaning to the audience that is consuming the content. 

With readership on the decline and journalist’s jobs being cut at an alarming rate, the question regarding who is reading the news becomes increasingly important for the future of the industry. A survey conducted by the Carnegie-Knight Initiative uncovered some alarming statistics regarding reader and viewership. Of teens and young adults, only “31 percent of both groups say they watch National TV news daily, compared with 57% of those over 30 ”. These numbers speak volumes for the future of the news industry as the trend of disinterest rises exponentially. When asked where the future of the news industry appears to be going, Nicole Bronzan, the Director of Communications at ProPublica had this to say, “We’re not quite ready to give up on younger readers when it comes to investigative journalism, but we’re sensitive to the fact that the news industry is changing ”. She goes on to say, “We believe there is a prominent place in the future for hard-hitting journalism that changes lives, and we’re committed to leading the way ”. Newspapers are being hit the hardest according to these statistics with “70 percent of Americans born in the 1930’s reading newspapers on a daily basis by the time they turned 20, compared with just 20 percent of those born in the early 1980’s ”. These numbers speak for more than just a trend of disinterest in readership; they also indicate an entire generation of people who are less informed about their immediate political world. “Every theory of popular government tells us democracy is unsustainable without an informed citizenry and journalism that monitors the powerful ”. Political information is directly linked to democracy; therefore a less informed populace is consequently a less democratic society. 

A new system of independent, non-profit journalism is attempting to ensure the survival of democracy. Such is the case with ProPublica and MinnPost, which are two non-profit news companies that deliver in depth, investigative journalism. Both were founded off the backings of public donations and foundation support and their success over the years have inspired more independent start-ups. When asked if donation backed companies have a viable and financially stable future, Nicole Collins commented, “While we might allude to the decrease in mainstream investigative journalism on the fundraising side, our news operation is all about show, don’t tell: we do the deep dives, which produce real impact, to show how much this part of our society matters ”. One of the more recent companies to emerge off of the support of the public is Matter. Matter was created by Bobbie Johnson and Jim Giles and was backed by public support on the website, Kickstarter. The digital journalism project “raised $50,000 in just 38 hours ” and after a month, brought in over $140,000 . Both Giles and Johnson “never expected to get the response they did ”, and had simply chosen Kickstarter as a way to measure the interest of the public. 

They more than met their expectations in fewer than two days of their project being publicly available for backing. The idea for Matter was birthed out of a lack of suitable outlets for stories of substance and importance pertaining to technology and science. The problem that Johnson and Giles discovered is precisely why companies such as ProPublica and Minnpost have found success. This being that there is a gap in the mainstream media regarding stories of importance. As print mediums were found to be a far too expensive proposition, the two journalists turned to the web as a possible platform.
As a publishing platform, the internet is perhaps the most versatile and unrestricted choice. While websites such as Tumblr, Blogspot, and Wordpress have been available for content publishing for years, it is only now that professionals are creating websites for the expressing of important content. The application, Wattpad , is a primary example of a platform that was built from the ground up as a means of sharing and publishing stories. The rise in popularity of self-publishing platforms speaks for the public demand of outlets that are not mainstream media. The Associate Professor of Publishing at Simon Fraser University John Maxwell commented, “The current popularity of self-publishing tools is derived mainly from the popularity and high quality of content among fan-fiction ”. This trend flows into journalism through companies such as Medium.
Medium is web based platform to house ideas and stories and allow them to manifest through connections to other stories. It was created by Ev Williams who is the co-founder of Blogger and Twitter; two similar publishing platforms. In early 2013, Medium purchased Matter after they struggled to find an audience who was willing to pay .99c for each story they published. Upon purchase, Medium moved Matter over to their platform and removed the pay wall. While the pay wall proved to be too large of an obstacle for readers, MinnPost and ProPublica have shown promise for subscription based content providers. Matter announced in late 2013 that “everything would be free to read, and a new membership scheme would be rolled out shortly ”.  The hope is that a membership program will not only attract new readers, but new writers and editors who want to work with the company. While Medium allows for anyone to create and publish articles, Matter’s content is still provided by established journalists. 

The success of MinnPost, ProPublica, and Matter has proven multiple points with regards to independent journalism. First, and arguably the most important, is that there is a public demand for an alternative source of news. The rehashed and reused content that the mainstream media feeds to the public is unsatisfactory for those who demand in depth, investigative work. Without sources to provide stories that deal with issues of society, democracy is gradually being endangered. With publicly funded projects such as Matter becoming increasingly prominent, the ability for stories of meaning to become publicly available will be important for the future of a democratic system, and informed populace.  

Works Cited