Spot.us: Crowdfunding Journalism

December 28th, 2008 in News, by Head Honcho

Like a gleaming diamond, crowdsourcing has many facets.

Take for instance, crowdsourcing and journalism. Crowdsourcing can be utilized in journalism in a number of ways For instance, Huffington Post takes a vibrant and active community, where the members’ comments are as interesting as the news article itself. CafeBabel features articles of its reporters alongside user-generated content. Newsvine allots “columns” for its users and allows them to post anything that is deemed newsworthy. DigitalJournal offers payment to its citizen journalists.

Spot.us uses another model that takes advantage of crowdsourcing. More specifically, Spot.us is crowdfunding journalism. The website allows anyone to have a say about a news story by sharing the cost to commission freelance journalists.

Spot.us gives a pitch on how it works:

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…. It’s a marketplace where independent reporters, community members and news organizations can come together and collaborate.

Anyone can jump-start a story by offering a tip (or a suggestion for the next project to be investigated). Spot.us will take the tip into account in deciding which story to pursue. Anyone can then pledge money for a particular story, which will be used to cover the cost of reporting. If the pledges reach the required amount, the commissioned journalists will then report the story.

There are concerns that this model can be manipulated by anyone with questionable agenda. There are also concerns that direct funding from the people may not take off. Regardless, it is good to see that Spot.us is exploring an alternative to the traditional journalism model, which has taken a hit in recent years. And as said by Jeff Howe in a New York Times article: “It’s not like the crowd is killing the newspaper. Lots of things are killing the newspaper. The crowd is at once a threat to newsrooms, but it’s also one of several strategies that could help save the newspapers.”

See the video for more information about Spot.us