Last month, we launched a Kickstarter project to raise $5,000 in order to seed our Writers’ Fund. Much to our collective surprise, we met that goal just a few days after the campaign began. So, with the project funded and closing this coming Friday, we’d like to give you one final nudge to contribute.
Here’s what we said last month, which still applies:
As you may have heard, this journalism stuff isn’t as lucrative as it once was. Even before the Great Internet Revolution hastened the demise of many paper publications, Champaign-Urbana’s alt-weekly efforts had a checkered financial past.
In light of that, since our founding in 2007, Smile Politely has been very careful not to bite off more than we can chew. Our revenues have been microscopic, but so have our expenses (not counting the $42 in business income taxes we had to pay last year—that stung); we’ve been able to steadily grow by utilizing the efforts of a great many dedicated volunteers. Eventually, the editors got paid a little bit for their trouble, and at the beginning of this year, we began to pay our writers for each cover story.
Now, we’re ready to take the next logical step: paying our writers for each locally-focused story that appears on the site. It’s still not much—$10 per article, with discretionary bumps to $25 or more for exceptional pieces—but it’s something that we’re excited to finally be able to do. We think that it will allow us to recruit and retain better writers, and will therefore result in a better experience for you, dear reader.
As in all things in this life, though, there is a small catch: we’re humbly asking for your support for the first time. We’ve set up a Kickstarter project to raise $5,000 to seed our Writers’ Fund, which we will pool with advertising revenue to pay our contributors for content that they produce. The end date for the fundraiser is September 16, but we’d like to not bug you very much, so the quicker we get there, the better.
We really hope that what we do here is of some value to you, and for the first time we’re asking that you spend a little of your hard-earned cash in return. All of the content will continue to be 100% free, but our goal is that 200 of you will kick in $25 to the Writers’ Fund cause. In return, each person who contributes $25 or more will receive the Smile Politely Anthology, a look back at some of the best articles to appear on our site in its first three and a half years. The Anthology will also include some great new short fiction from local writers, as well as some words of wisdom and smack talk from local luminaries. It’s set to be published before Thanksgiving, for all of your holiday gift-giving needs.
All right, we’ll get off of our soapbox and get back to trying to document some of the great (and not-so-great) aspects of Champaign-Urbana. We thank you for your support, and we look forward to continuing to bring you insightful, challenging stories every week for years to come.