THE DREAM IN ACTION

A good friend of mine Dave Cohn (who has also contributed to ActionsTalk) launched a project that he has been working on for 6+ months this week. Spot.Us is coined as community funded reporting and is a result of a grant Dave received from the Knight News Challenge. Dave is a very accomplished journalist having written for Wired Magazine and graduated from Columbia University. His passionate for the future of reporting is inspiring and he is dedicated to the end goal of improving the current news reporting model.

With Spot.Us users can log in and donate to have a certain topic reported on. If a news station donate they must donate over 50% in order to have exclusive rights to that story. If the amount donated go’s over the needed amount users get credit towards their next donation to Spot.Us.

Spot.Us is a nonprofit project of the Center for Media Change. We are an open source project, to pioneer “community funded reporting.” Through Spot.Us the public can commission journalists to do investigations on important and perhaps overlooked stories. All donations are tax deductible and if a news organization buys exclusive rights to the content, your donation will be reimbursed. Otherwise, all content is made available to all through a Creative Commons license. It’s a marketplace where independent reporters, community members and news organizations can come together and collaborate.

… David Cohn has worked with journalism luminaries such as Jay Rosen and Jeff Jarvis. He has been working in the citizen journalism movement since 2005 on projects like NewAssignment.Net, Assignment Zero, Beat Blogging, and Off The Bus. He also co-organized the first and second Networked Journalism Summit. Spot.Us is informed by the growing citizen journalism movement. Spot.Us is an attempt to ensure that journalism remain a strong and vital part of our local democracies as a participatory process, not just a product.

This site, due to Dave’s location has launched only in San Fran, but I’m sure with the attention that this project is sure to received they will be in other cities soon. Make sure to check out Spot.Us and Dave’s blog!


Spot.Us – Community Funded Reporting Intro from Digidave