David Cohn, founder of the pioneering crowd-funded journalism project Spot.us, reflected this week on what he’s learned from the site since it launched six months ago.
Below, I’ve provided a few notable highlights.
Cohn wrote:
Measuring success. “It has been 24 weeks since our ‘official’ launch and we have funded 23 stories in total — with another two or three on the way. One story a week is far better than I expected.”
Project management. “The initial idea of assigning peer review editors hasn’t worked perfectly. Some partners have worked out splendidly and in other situations Spot.Us has taken a larger managerial role than I initially expected. …Increasingly with independent freelancers we are taking a more managerial/editorial role in the process of a pitch forming into a full story, which includes some editorial functions and some technical support with video or audio.”
Not duplicating mainstream news. “Spot.Us needs to back off of ‘quick hits.’ These are the classic newspaper day-one article. We have funded a few of these and increasingly I find they have less added value. I want our stories to provide new information, views, etc. — not rehash what is already out there.”
Which pitches work. “Stories which have a concrete anchor to a geographic or ethnic community do better. Stories that are lofty, more analysis based or consumerist tend to flounder. In short it comes down to relevance and original reporting.”
Cohn’s mindset shift. “Recently I’ve had to make a conscious mind-shift from web-entrepreneur back to being a journalist. Obviously I want to grow the platform out more (we recently added PayPal) — but in the end it is a journalism project and reporting benefits from having deadlines, editorial feedback and more.”
Anyone can do this, with the right tools. “The concept of ‘community funded reporting,’ ‘community supported journalism,’ whatever you want to call it — is FAR larger than Spot.Us. We are building an open source CMS so others can join us easily (Join our Google Group for discussion) but as we proved before our launch — anyone can do this with just a wiki.”
Cohn also talked about what’s coming next for Spot.us, and some problems that have arisen. (A fully funded reporter, for instance, went MIA.) It’s a good, frank read from an ambitious and intriguing effort. Seeing as Spot.us is seeking collaborations with partners and expanding beyond the Bay Area, news organizations might consider opportunities for collaborating with ventures such as this.
