Press Start

Press Start is the first global crowdfunding platform for reporters in countries where the press cannot report freely. Our crowdfunding campaigns offer a lifeline for reporters unable to find financing for stories important to their communities. Press Start seeks talented journalists with scant resources to support their work, connecting them with a global audience willing to invest in them.

Press Start website: pressstart.org

Our Mission

Press Start’s mission is to foster independent journalism where it is suppressed, using crowdfunding as a lifeline for reporters unable to find financing for important stories.

What is Press Start

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Press Start is the first global crowdfunding platform for reporters in countries where the press cannot report freely, potentially revolutionizing the way independent journalism is funded in places where it is under threat.

We seek out talented and influential journalists who might live in impoverished countries with scant resources to support their crowdfunding campaigns, or any independent journalism at all. Or they might lack the foreign-language skills or the right contacts to mount a successful crowdfunding campaign on their own. Then we link them up with donors large and small around the world by launching a crowdfunding campaign for their story on our site.

That’s how Press Start is unique. Here’s why it’s important: Only 9 percent of humankind lives in a country where, according to Reporters Without Borders, the level of press freedom is either good or satisfactory. And 75 percent live in countries where, on the contrary, the situation is categorized as difficult or very serious, and the freedom to inform is heavily suppressed.

That means that the vast majority of people – more than six billion – live in countries where journalists risk their careers, and sometimes lives, to report on governments, businesses, and other powers, exercising what is a democratic right in other nations.

While we can’t stay the hand of a brutal dictator, we can help keep alive this flame of independent journalism by supporting those journalists brave enough to keep writing, despite the threats.

They deserve our attention and support – especially as authoritarian states and movements grow bolder and are ever more ready to target those who would hold them to account.

Press Start was created by Transitions, an organization with over 20 years’ experience working with journalists under threat.

Find out more about how Press Start works here.

Project Overview

An Turkey’s Istanbul Convention Withdrawal Sheds Light on Gender Bias in Turkish Media

On Saturday, 20 March, Turkish people woke up to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decision to withdraw from the Istanbul treaty, which sparked a tremendous response from Turkish women, who immediately took to the streets demanding a reversal of the decision.