David Cohn answers questions about Spot.us and community funded reporting

Have you heard of Spot Us?

The idea is simple: let the community commission news stories from professional journalists by donating small amounts of money towards the stories that they’d like to follow.

Slated for launch this fall and funded by the Knight News Challenge, Spot Us is poised to answer, or at least illuminate, several questions that seem to be plaguing the news industry, not the least of which is figuring out a good way (and I mean this kindly) to move beyond the super-lame and totally superficial “you can leave comments!” level of interaction newspapers currently have with readers.

Regardless of whether or not Spot Us paves the way for other, similar projects (maybe moving us towards a separation of content production and content distribution), it will be a very interesting experiment to watch.

Spot Us’ founder (David Cohn) is a digitally savvy journalist who has written for Wired, Columbia Journalism Review, and the New York Times.

He kindly took the the time to answer several of my questions about how Spot Us could change the landscape for journalists or for what journalists write about. Here are his answers:

Jason: In my mind, Spot Us falls firmly in the “not for profit” arena. Do you think that journalism as a whole will need to adopt donation-based, nonprofit strategies to stay alive?

Spot Us is firmly in the not for profit arena, yes. I DO NOT think that journalism as a whole will need to adopt donation-based nonprofit strategies to stay alive. Right now a lot of people are looking for silver bullet solutions, but there is no such thing.

Often people think I’m trying to “save journalism” with Spot Us. It would be great if that’s what occurred but truth is; this is an experiment looking into what is otherwise unexplored territory. In the end the only thing that can save journalism is innovation and an entrepreneurial spirit (for profit or nonprofit). I do think that donations could play a role in bringing journalism into a sustainable model - but it will have to be coupled with other things, like turning news organizations into civic resources (like libraries). But that’s a whole other discussion.

Bottom line: I hope Spot Us funds meaningful journalism.

Jason: Are you worried that letting the public “vote with their wallets” will lead to an excess of frivolous news? Is it a problem if that’s what happens?

I am not worried that letting the public “vote with their wallets” will lead to an excess of frivolous news. But you are right - if that’s what happens, it’s a problem.

Here’s why I’m not worried about it. For the “frivolous news” to get through the following all need to occur.

1. A group of people (not just an individual) need to agree the story is important enough to donate money.
2. A reporter has to be willing to stake their professional reputation on the story.
3. An independent editor, assigned to the story by Spot Us, has to be willing to stake their professional reputation on the story.
4. Even if 1-3 happen the final story will only be published in the Spot Us newsfeed. We are not a news destination. So for the story to really get any traction a news organization would have to be willing to re-print the work.

That’s my initial response. This is probably the question I’m asked the most, so I have several responses. Another, more cheeky response is: Don’t you think letting advertisers pay for journalism is going to lead to frivolous news? That is to say - there is no such thing as clean money. There is this myth that newspapers money is clean, but we’ve all heard the horror stories about a publisher who killed an investigation because it threatened potential advertisers.

Jason: Does Spot Us provide any institutional support for its journalists - for example, would a lawsuit be served against spot.us or the individual journalist? If so, what makes you think donations will cover the cost of the organization?

Spot Us is a marketplace, like Craigslist, for the buyers and sellers of news and information. Reporters on Spot Us are not staff - they are freelancers. In the beginning we will not provide any institutional support. We may work out a system whereby local news publishers can provide indemnity for reporters.

Jason: On what level are you planning to “work with local media outlets” to get stories published more widely? Does that mean some stories will be printed like AP stories? Will you sell the articles to local papers as a second revenue stream? Why would a local paper pay?

Because Spot Us is not worried about advertising we will be giving away our content for free (under a creative commons license). Any news organization can republish our content. This is a way for them to bolster their freelance budget. OR: if a news organization wants exclusive rights to a story - they must refund the original donors. Why would a local paper pay? Because they are in the news business - we are giving them quality content and a guaranteed audience. It’s an opportunity to build a meaningful relationship with their audience. This also creates a micro-economy for journalism. The newspapers don’t have to look at it as lost money. It’s money that will be re-invested into another investigation - potentially another story for them to run.

Jason: I am assuming Spot Us does not plan to serve ads against its articles.

Not right now. I think the real goal of Spot Us is to find out if there is a revenue model outside of advertising.