Tag Archives: radioheadjournalism

Wired.com: Crowdfunding a story you can’t sell

What do you do when you’ve got a story no-one wants to buy? When US-based journalist Paige Williams couldn’t sell her magazine story about Dolly Freed, a woman briefly famous for writing a book about frugal-living in 1978, she decided to do what she calls ‘radiohead journalism’ – getting people to contribute whatever amount they chose, as Thom Yorke’s band did with their album, In Rainbows.  The ‘Finding Dolly Freed’ story cost over $2,000 to produce, and in February she reported that 160 people had donated just over $1,500.

[T]he Dolly Freed project became not only an exercise in self-publishing but also an experiment in “Radiohead journalism.” Would readers pay for a story that they could read for free on an independent website by a writer they’d never heard of?

Williams’ account for Wired.com at this link…