A blogger who secured more than £6,000 in funding from donors on the internet to live-tweet the hacking trial is planning a book on the affair.
UPDATE: Peter Jukes has since raised another £14,572 via a second crowdfunding appeal, allowing him to cover the hacking trial to its conclusion.
Peter Jukes has already written a book about the background to the trial and hopes to have a second edition out during the summer.
He said he had no intention of covering the entire trial when he applied for a press ticket back in August on behalf of the Daily Beast. Now though, he is committed until Christmas and maybe beyond.
He said: "I started off as a blogger but I’ve had a fairly eclectic career. I have always had an interest in journalism. I have written for television and radio plays.
“At the time of the first US presidential election I started blogging, but in truth I’ve been around the media and journalists for more than twenty years. I’ve been following these events closely for a while and I wrote a book on the background of the trial, The Fall of the House of Murdoch. Hopefully next summer I will be able to get a second edition out by next summer.”
Jukes said: “I thought initially that I would have only been able to live tweet the opening argument and that would be the end of it. I told some people that I couldn’t afford to keep operating in Central London every day. After a couple of days a few people said to me that I should crowd sourcesome money to stay going until Christmas.
“I thought to start off with that this was like begging. Then someone sent me £20 by Paypal to my email address. I didn’t even know you could do that. It snowballed from there."
Jukes established a homepage on the indiegogo.com crowdfunding website and within six days he had exceeded his target, allowing him to continue into the New Year.
“I initially set a target of £4,000 but I managed to secure £6,362. I am absolutely astounded by the generosity of people, some of whom I know and some I have never met.
“I don’t think crowd sourcing would be an effective way of fundraising for investigative journalism though. You couldn’t really tell people what you were working on in advance or else the subject of the investigation would find out.”
A total of 240 people pledged money on the indiegogo website to enable Jukes to continue his coverage until Christmas.
“I do hope to continue in the New Year, but because of my varied work I have a musical coming out and I may need to do some workshops. From a blogging background, I have found covering the trial fascinating. When blogging it is all about opinions but in a trial you have to concentrate on the facts before the jury.”
He advised journalists to consider crowdfunding as a method of raising funds in future.
“I couldn’t stay covering the trial producing one or two freelance articles a week and afford to operate in Central London. It is interesting that people have paid for me to continue at the trial and provide my Twitter stream. They don’t get it exclusively it is available to everyone. I guess they appreciate that for a service to be delivered it requires funding.”
You can follow Jukes' coverage on Twitter @peterjukes.
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