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Editor’s Note: Encyclo has not been regularly updated since August 2014, so information posted here is likely to be out of date and may be no longer accurate. It’s best used as a snapshot of the media landscape at that point in time.

Kickstarter is an online platform for funding projects ranging from movies, albums, or journalism-related endeavors.

Kickstarter was founded in 2009 by Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler, and Charles Adler. The company is based in Manhattan.

Kickstarter is a form of “crowdfunding” that allows the public to donate small or large amounts to projects set up by a third-party. Projects on Kickstarter must offer a reward to users to encourage donations, with rewards ranging from a special product to exclusive access to a project. The approach to fundraising requires projects to reach full-funding by a deadline, if a funding target is not met the money is returned to supporters. Kickstarter takes a 5 percent fee from funded projects to cover their costs. Donations are handled by Amazon Payments, which also takes a small percentage of the raised funds for credit card processing.

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Peers, allies, & competitors:

Apple, Google, Spot.Us

Recent Nieman Lab coverage:

Nov. 5, 2018 / Christine Schmidt

2018 has been a record-breaking year for journalism Kickstarters (though only about 1 in 5 actually get funded) — The first time the National Observer tried to raise money on Kickstarter, they couldn’t get the framing quite right. The Canadian investigative news outlet reached out to Kickstarter’s team for guidance. A fe...

March 5, 2018 / Christine Schmidt

Could local news driven by residents who pay fees in a special service district…work? — Lots of schemes to save local journalism have been suggested, and whether or not many of them will pan out is still unclear. (Blockchain, anyone?) Here’s one more to add to the mix: “community information dis...

Feb. 8, 2018 / Christine Schmidt

DNAinfo Chicago will be reborn as Block Club Chicago, relying on blockchain and subscriptions instead of billionaires — Three months after local news specialist DNAinfo’s website was abruptly pulled offline, a team of Chicago journalists have rebirthed its spirit as Block Club Chicago — boosted by blockchain and supported by subsc...

Jan. 17, 2018 / Laura Hazard Owen

“We stepped in and started doing it”: How one woman built an award-winning news outlet from her dining room table — Linda Solomon Wood is the American who threatened to move to Canada — and then actually did it. Once there, she did something else perhaps even more improbable: She launched a national, investigative digital news site ...

Dec. 11, 2017 / Shan Wang

Former Gawker employees are crowdfunding to relaunch a Gawker.com that’s owned by a nonprofit and funded by readers — SaveGawker.com launched Monday in an effort to…well, save Gawker.com, and relaunch it as a member-supported news site. The flagship Gawker.com became an orphan site after Univision bought all Gawker Media propertie...

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Recently around the web, from Mediagazer:

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Primary author: Justin Ellis. Main text last updated: May 9, 2011.

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