Robert Greenwald

Part of what is so interesting to me about Robert Greenwald's idea of having the audience pay for the film before it produced is that it truly allows consumers to drive the market. The way our economy works right now is supposed to be consumer driven but often I feel like it is a chicken and the egg senario. Does Walmart produce shoes for a third of the price because of consumers or do people become consumers because Walmart can produce shows for a third of the price (this applies not only to Walmart but to all major chains). Companies are always trying to anticipate the consumer yet the consumer has become so materialistic they get things purely because they are so cheap. That being said I think this model would be really beneficial for media on a whole. Bloggers have already started doing this, they receive funding before they move forward. The question that strikes me is how can we apply this model to large scale media. It may not be possible to do for everything that is published but taking the "refritos" idea from south america, what if news corporations set up a part of their site in which all of the stories are available for you to pay to have a journalist re-investigate. Set a number like $100 and if a story raises that much then it will be reinvestigated. Obviously there is still a lot of possible corruption and interference but it would be a great way for consumers to drive economically the content they're getting, since it seems like that is the only way to get through to mainstream media.