Though the world of professional journalism seems to be living in a state of perpetual crisis nowadays, a great deal of creativity is there to be seen at the bottom of the spectrum. Whereas the institutions of yesterday are trying to take the high road to digital transition — some investing upwards of 40M$ like Montreal's La Presse or, as it was revealed recently in Ken Auletta's brilliant piece in the New Yorker, losing 30 to 40M£ a year, like the Guardian —, newcomers are reinventing both the business model and the interactivity patterns between readers and writers, all the while maintaining the highest quality standards. 

Those familiar with the work of Clayton Christensen will recognize what this means: among the group of challenging alternatives probably lies the future of the industry. While it may be to early to pick a winner, some contenders are taking their disruptive role in the business very seriously. 

One such initiative, Contributoria, was launched earlier in January by the same Guardian Group who so proudly backs the losses made by its flagship publication. An open journalism platform, Contributoria is based on a distributed system where anybody that can write is given an opportunity to submit his or her idea to a community of his peers, garner support throughout a preliminary vetting process, and earn their keep if / when the article is published. 

The process is fully collaborative; using a Google-Doc-like interface, everything from project selection, to ongoing editing, to publication, is done with the help of many, guaranteeing a process of fact-checking and copyediting that no single-editor management structure could replicate. "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow"…

"At Contributoria everyone can get involved in the entire process — by backing proposals from journalists and funding their projects, to commissioning new projects in areas of special interest which don’t necessarily make the pages of the mainstream media." writes Sarah Hartley, one of the journalists behind the project. 

An interesting mixture of Kickstarter and Medium (an analogy provided by Fast Company's Jenna Kagel), Contributoria is a points-based economy where, thus far, money is replaced with points, which can be allotted to any of the proposals undergoing review. The online magazine works on a three-month cycle of planning, selection and production, each of which involves the community fully. In the beta version, membership is free, but the future of the platform lies in a remuneration structure where, in a nutshell, community members will pay to be editors (!). 

In the absence of an editorial board (or an editor, for that matter), we were not able to reach anyone for comment (though we did follow them on Twitter). But join the platform, we did, even supported and commented on one of the projects for the March issue. Who knows, maybe within a few months, you'll see a familiar name go up in one of the site's list of contributors. One thing's sure, we'll keep you posted.