We tend to think that crowdfunding is a very 2010s idea. Only last year, I was throwing the idea out there that a new Vancouver daily could be kickstarted for a mere $22 million.
But reading this Peter Mackie story about the short-lived Vancouver Times, I discover that it was completely funded by the public buying shares, much of it sold from a stand at the PNE. The publisher, William “Val” Warren, hoped to replicate this throughout Canada.
It only survived a year, bad management and lack of ads dooming the project. Newspaper academic Marc Edge has a history of its short life and slow death.