Six months of community-funded journalism

Dave Cohen has written a thoughtful post critiquing the first six months of Spot.Us, an interesting community-funded journalism project in San Francisco.

The site works by inviting the community to suggest news stories they’d like to see written. When a story idea is accepted, the pitch goes on the site with a price tag and people contribute towards the cost of the story. When enough money has been pledged, the site commissions a freelance journalist to research and write the story.

At the six-month point Spot.Us had run 23 stories that had been suggested and funded by the community. Here’s some of what they’ve learned along he way, but please read the rest of David’s post.

With that many stories out we have had a tough time keeping a reign on them all. Especially while constantly trying to push forward with more stories, improve the platform, build out relationships, etc.

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.

I still want Spot.Us to be a platform for other organizations, but 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.
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The Types of Stories: 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. It comes down to what service we are trying to provide to those who donate. More thoughts on that here.
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What pitches work: We have begun to see a pattern among the pitches that do and do not get funded (We’ve had five unsuccessful pitches and a sixth that was taken down for a reporters health issues). The best way I can articulate it is that 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.
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Often in Spot.Us reporters are waiting for their pitches to mature (more money) and this causes a long lag time between initial pitches and reporting – a lag that I believe we must cut back on in order to better serve those who donate. I also think that if we treat pitches more like beat blogs, then ongoing reporting will be our best marketing.
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Pitches Made by Spot.Us: We have fully funded a pitch that doesn’t have a reporter attached to it… yet. Now we can go out and find a reporter and because the money is already in the pot, our working relationship with this reporter will feel more traditional. The logisitics here are much easier for Spot.Us.

There is also the opportunity to shop this to a traditional news organization who will refund the original donors in exchange for getting first publishing rights. If it is a news organization of high caliber we will let them choose the freelance reporter.
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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. With that in mind – it is important for Spot.Us to convey the lessons we’ve learned. Strategies trump technology any day of the week.

The rest of David’s post is here.