A journalist friend of mine emailed me earlier this week to tell me about the launch of Beacon, a new publication platform she’s a part of. I opened and read her email immediately because 1) she’s a great writer and 2) she manages to get herself into some seriously sticky situations while investigating her stories so her material is usually pretty juicy.
Most writers complain about not getting paid enough, but Jean Guerrero (that’s her name) and her fellow investigative journalists win this one hands down. They are getting paid next to nothing for pieces that take weeks of perilous work to research.
Beacon, it turns out, is attempting to solve the problem with a subscription-based news service. Here’s what Jean had to say about it:
Beacon is this incredible new journalism platform by Dan Fletcher, the creator of Time Magazine’s NewsFeed and a former managing editor at Facebook, meant to change the fact that some of the best reporters today risk their lives in war zones just to make $70 for a single article — all thanks to the current failing business model of journalism. I’m one of 30 journalists worldwide that you can directly subscribe to on Beacon. By subscribing to me for $5 a month (with a free trial and easy cancellation any time), you instantly get access to ALL of the OTHER great writers on Beacon, as well. I’ll be covering human rights issues in Latin America — the kind of really human-focused, heartbreaking stuff that I couldn’t cover for a news corp that relied on advertisers’ dollars.
Support quality investigative reporting for $5 a month?
Yes, thank you.
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