Outcome funding for journalists after their stories create tangible impact

Problem

Producing global investigations like the Panama Papers or local stories on community grievances are not sustainable via ad based revenue models. At the same time, such stories uncover new information and often lead to tangible progress on the issue they highlight. Which led us to ask a simple question - instead of having journalists write grant applications for every new story they want to pursue, can we just pay them after their past stories create impact?

History

VoiceDeck’s founder Devansh Mehta is a journalist with personal experience of the funding challenges in the media industry. In 2017, he did his master’s in investigative journalism at the Columbia Journalism School, where he worked with newsrooms like the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) that handled the Eurasia region for the Panama Papers. Despite OCCRPs massive impact (over $10 billion in asset seizures, 650+ indictments or arrests and over 1000 investigations or actions) they are unable to capture the value of the impact they create, outside of what is raised through grants.

Post graduation, Devansh worked for 5 years with CGNet Swara, a citizen journalism platform operating in the Maoist affected regions of Central India. Local residents would dial in to a toll-free number and report longstanding community issues, which the organization would forward to government officials for their resolution. CGNet has solved over 1500 issues reported by the community but is unable to successfully raise grants without English speakers on the team.

Solution

In the case of both OCCRP and CGNet, the root of the problem is same: the optimal strategy for nonprofit newsrooms is to sell the past impact from their stories multiple times, to as many funders as they can get an audience with, making impact marketing more important than its creation for fundraising.

At app.voicedeck.org, we record each impact from a journalist story as Hypercerts on Optimism (these are a web3 protocol for impact certificates). After the Hypercert is fully bought out by funders, newsrooms cannot raise any more money until they create their next impact.

We think this solution is superior to existing grant funding models for 3 reasons

1. Moves past reputation or brand based giving. If you like the impact described in a Hypercert, buy it! Doesn't matter whether or not you have heard of the newsroom.

2. Even with stellar marketing teams, newsrooms cannot raise more money than impact they have created. Each impact has a price and when fully bought out, cannot be sold again.

3. Newsrooms have to account for their impact and have an incentive to stay with their past stories instead of moving on to the next one. Recording their past impact onchain adds discipline and history to their operations.

Traction

After first starting work on this idea in August 2021, we finally launched on Sepolia testnet! Ahead of our OP Mainnet launch, we can use all the support we can get. Even if not financial, feedback on our UI/UX would be great !

Our pilot tokenized the impact reports of 3 citizen journalism outlets, including CGNet Swara. If we are maximally successful, newsrooms will regularly mint hypercerts of all outcomes arising from their stories and media funders will purchase them.

Our North Star? Getting the Panama Papers onchain, a pivotal moment for our industry and the world.