NowPublic Raises $10.6M

Over the past couple of years, citizen journalism has become a growing part of the media landscape – and one of the leading players has been Vancouver-based NowPublic.

The company’s profile should get a huge boost amid news it has raised $10.6-million in private equity from Rho Ventures, Brightspark and GrowthWorks. The deal comes just over a year after NowPublic raised $1.4-million from Brightspark and several angel investors.

Mathew Ingram spoke with NowPublic’s Leonard Brody and Michael Tippett about the financing. The two entrepreneurs said they considered takeover offers but decided to focus on growing the company rather selling out too early – a decision likely bolstered by the strong interest in the financing.

Citizen journalism – and the concept’s future – has been in the spotlight recently with the demise of Backfence.com. As well, Dan Gilmour’s high-profile Bayosphere project also failed to resonate with readers or advertisers.

When it comes to citizen journalism, the key question is whether people want to read stories that, for the most part, aren’t as well written, polished or insightful as those written by professional journalists. While there is probably a niche for citizen journalism, it’s hard to see it establishing a major foothold at a time when so much news is available online.

NowPublic hopes to cement itself as the leading citizen journalism player by becoming a wire service with thousands of correspondents around the world. The company’s business model is mostly based on striking deals with media organizations looking to “outsource” their news gathering operations at a time when financial pressures are forcing them to squeeze costs and shrink newsrooms.

Earlier this year, NowPublic signed a deal with Associated Press that will see NowPublic’s citizen journalists contribute content (photos, text and video) to breaking stories on AP. AP will pay citizen journalists if their material is used with NowPublic getting part of the fee.

More: An interesting comment by NowPublic CEO Leonard Brody on GigaOm.com about whether you need to pay your writers: “We’re personally not big believers in paying for content, because we want you to own your content.”