The Star Observer launches crowd funding campaign to pay legal fees and cover weak ad market

Gay and lesbian community magazine The Star Observer is asking for its readers to donate much needed funds via a Pozible campaign as it seeks to grow its reserves in a tough advertising market, and to help pay legal bills.

In April the weekly newspaper relaunched as a free monthly magazine, responding to consumers accessing news via its digital offering. A week into a three week campaign it has raised $24,545 of a $75,000 goal.

Star Observer publisher and CEO Daniel Bone told Mumbrella: “The reason for doing it is there’s an number of factors that have come together which we’ve described as a perfect storm. We’ve launched the new Star Observer as a monthly magazine, we’ve been going for five months with that, and obviously the cost and the energy going into launching is fairly significant.

“At the same time as that it’s not been the best advertising environment and that combined with some legal issues which came in at the same time.