ABSTRACT
For a long time, the profitable production of journalism has primarily relied on advertising revenues. Over the past ten years, however, this financing model has become increasingly untenable, especially for newspaper publishers. Journalistic media companies are in the process of adapting to the difficult economic conditions. The field of financing models has consequently become highly diversified. Direct user support has become increasingly important for the journalism industry of both media corporations but especially for start-ups, which rely on donation models and crowdfunding campaigns to raise money to produce journalistic offerings. This direct financial support of media companies through “donations and crowdfunding” is presented in this chapter as an important area of innovation common to the D-A-CH region of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland in the JoIn-DemoS project.
