Online Journalism News

Spot.Us Q&A: How community-funded news works in practice

Following the publication of its first community-funded news article in September, San Francisco news start-up Spot.us officially opened its doors last month.

The project, which received $340,000 from last year's Knight News Challenge, aims to connect journalists with members of the public by asking citizens to finance story pitches through donations.

It's working: four stories costing between $250 and $550 have been financed and published so far and there are seven pitches currently looking for donors.

As the site gets ready to publish two new pieces, 'Bay Area Cement Plants and Global Warming' and 'How Safe Are San Francisco Bay Beaches and Water A Year After Cosco Busan Oil Spill?', Journalism.co.uk asked its founder David Cohn how he's making it work and what's next on the Spot.Us agenda.

Are the stories attracting regular donors or new names each time?
[DC]It is a bit of both: so far the regular donors I would call general 'supporters of the cause' for journalism in general - not just Spot.Us; but with every pitch we get new donors as well.

The real test will be if those new donors will become repeat donors in the future.

Have you had any interest from publications either picking up the stories or approaching you to use them?
This is one of the most desirable parts of the process. Spot.Us is designed not to be in competition with mainstream news [providers], but to work with them.

I am doing what I can to encourage them to use the content. It is free to them but not free overall - so the quality is high.

Ideally we will eventually have a story that is so high in quality a news organisation would be willing to payback the original donors and in return get first publishing rights.

Could you explain the thinking behind the widgets you recently launched?
The widgets were built for free using 'sprout builder' and their purpose is two-fold.

Firstly, I'm a boot-strapped, non-profit start-up. Before I spend any real money on anything I want to test it using free online tools and I also try to evangelise other organisations do the same, so I have to practise what I preach.

Secondly, I want others - news organisations, blogs, journalists etc - to own the pitch: there is no reason why somebody should have to come across Spot.Us in order to know about a cool journalistic endeavour to raise money.

The cause can go anywhere on the web with the widgets.

You're recruiting for a community organiser - why?
I'm hoping to make a decision about this by the end of the week. This is actually a really important person, not only because I can only stretch so thin, but because this person is going to have to teach us journalists how to run a campaign.

Community organiser is a good title - but the skill set of this person has to be a bit like a campaign manager. Every pitch on Spot.Us is a campaign with a goal.

Journalists aren't used to community organising or campaign management, but it is a skill set that I think we can learn from and may have to start including on any projects that are participatory - something we all know is the direction of the industry.

Are you looking to expand Spot.Us's coverage beyond San Francisco?
So far I'm happy with the progress in SF and I'm going to continue to push this progress in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, I'm working on the next version of Spot.Us's technical infrastructure. Depending on a few things, including resources, I hope that Spot.Us will be ready to expand by March of next year and might spread to two or three cities.

Tags (click tag to find related articles; click icon for feed):
local | knight news challenge | david cohn | spot us |

Sign up here for our free, daily email newsletter to get all the latest stories, jobs, tips and more.

Got a story? Email our news team: Laura Oliver; Judith Townend or telephone +44 (0)1273 384290. You can also follow us on Twitter: @journalismnews / @LauraOliver / @JTownend.