Idea Lab

From High-Fives to the Fetal Position: The Emotional Highs and Lows of a Startup

by David Cohn

Circa is not my first tango with a startup. Even before Spot.Us, the startup I am perhaps still best known for, I have been part and parcel to various projects that were "starting up" even if their aim wasn't to build a company (i.e., conference organizing or experiments that had sunset dates like Assignment Zero). People talk all the time about the skills journalists need in the world of media entrepreneurship. I've written some lessons and ideas in the past. What is often left out of the conversation: the mental traits journalists need in the world of media entrepreneurship. The...

• January 15, 2013
• comments

So How Is Circa Different from Writing Articles?

by David Cohn

I had the opportunity to discuss Circa today with PBS MediaShift's Mark Glaser, Skift founder Rafat Ali, and PandoDaily's Sarah Lacy on the Mediatwits podcast. It's an honor to be able to discuss a project you are working on and passionate about with folks who I consider friends, colleagues or both. Circa is a new type of mobile news app that collects the "atomic units" of stories -- facts, quotes and images -- and puts them into running stories with alerts to updates. Lacy, who has many good things to say about Circa, also detailed one thing she thinks we...

• October 19, 2012
• comments

Let's Get This Straight: Information vs. Content

by David Cohn

I couldn't be more excited to join Circa, a new media startup, as "founding editor." Part of the excitement is because, as the title suggests, it's not your average editorial job. There are elements to the editorial process of Circa that will be unique. They will be defined and perhaps redefined as we go. That's the nature of working for an organization whose mission isn't to excel at the traditions of journalism but to redefine them altogether. It gives me the opportunity to question all assumptions, break down and redefine organizational structures, and more. At paidContent 2012 John Borthwick of BetaWorks gave an intriguing...

• June 4, 2012
• comments

How 'Screenularity' Will Destroy Television as We Know It

by David Cohn

Yesterday I announced the next project I'm going to work on which will focus on mobile news consumption (Circa). As a result, I've been thinking a lot about screens.In the future, consumers will not make a distinction between their television, phone or computer screens. The only difference will be the size of each screen, its placement and, therefore, what you most likely do with it.  But one will not call the handheld-sized screen their "mobile phone." That you might use it to make phone calls will be happenstance. You will just as easily make a call on the 15-inch screen at...

• April 26, 2012
• comments

Take a Survey Instead of Paying? Google Follows the Spot.us Model

by David Cohn

This came across my social media feed Thursday morning: "Google Unveils New Revenue Option for Web Publishers." In short: It's a simple technology where readers who come across a pay wall can opt into taking a survey instead of having to reach for their wallet. The survey then creates some funds for the publisher and gives the reader access to content. Why does this sound familiar? Because it is. I hate to sound like that guy at the bar who says "that was my idea," as I cry into my whiskey because it's not just about the idea/concept. It's execution....

• April 2, 2012
• comments

What Will Bring More Attention to the Civic Value of Journalism?

by David Cohn

For this month's Carnival of Journalism I am going to invoke the rule of "no apologies" and change the question a bit. Host Steve Outing asks: "What emerging technology or digital trend do you think will have a significant impact on journalism in the year or two ahead?" I don't think it will be a technology, but an experience. And what will "save" journalism might not be the experience of consuming journalism. This is an ongoing thought that comes from the second (or third) time I met Michael Maness when he was at Gannett and he talked about human-centered design...

• February 28, 2012
• comments

The Other Side of Entrepreneurial Journalism

by David Cohn

A version of this post first appeared here. It is yet another Carnival of Journalism (our one-year anniversary). The Carnival is a network of bloggers I reinvigorated who all write a response to a different question every month. This month's question comes from Michael Rosenblum: "Can a good journalist also be a good capitalist?" A few weeks ago, I was invited to speak at the Cronkite School of Journalism in Arizona by my friend and mentor Dan Gillmor. It was a gathering of journalism professors from around the country who are going to build their own curriculum to teach entrepreneurial...

• February 2, 2012
• comments

What I Want for Christmas: A Frictionless Blogging Platform

by David Cohn

For those who don't know -- the Carnival of Journalism is something I restarted in January (coming up on a year!) where a bunch of journalism-bloggers get together and write about the same topic once a month. The question is posed by the host -- who rotates. This month's host is the Guardian's developer blog, and they ask: If you are a journalist, what would be the best present from programmers and developers that Santa Claus could leave under your Christmas tree? And, correspondingly, if you are a programmer or developer, what would be the best present from journalism that...

• December 19, 2011
• comments

Spot.Us Merges With Public Insight Network

by David Cohn

Spot.Us launched in November of 2008, making this our three-year anniversary. Counting the months of planning (and applying for the Knight News Challenge) that went into the launch, I've been working on Spot.Us, a journalism crowdfunding project, for almost four years. In that time, we've pushed boundaries, and have had many successes and shortcomings which I've tried to share along the way. As I've always said, Spot.Us will never be perfect. It will never be "done," and as long as we can strive for something, we're making progress.Today we are taking a big stride by formally being acquired by the...

• November 29, 2011
• comments

Hyper-Local Heaven at UC Berkeley's Journalism School

by David Cohn

I've said this many times before: The driving force behind my career has been to increase the level of transparency and participation in the process of journalism. That driving force has taken my career in all kinds of fun and exciting directions, and now I'd like to announce a new one. This year I'll be working with UC Berkeley's journalism school. Specifically, I will be working with the school's three hyper-local sites (MissionLocal.org, OaklandNorth.net and RichmondConfidential.com) to come up with new products for their website. Some of these products might be editorial or service-related -- but the main thrust will...

• September 29, 2011
• comments

Barriers to Failure

by David Cohn

At this year's ONA conference, I'll be on a panel called "I failed and so can you." I've always been a big fan of failure. I think journalism should hold a "fail camp" (inspired by Ethan Zuckerman). When I restarted the blog carnival, a site that I've organized where bloggers can convene to all write about the same topic, I dedicated a month toward failure. I'm working on a new project (details to come soon, promise) and I think/hope failure will be a big part of it. We talk a lot about barriers to success. But we also say that...

• September 14, 2011
• comments

Journalists Should Join Google+ to Understand What Comes Next

by David Cohn

This month's Carnival of Journalism, a site that I've organized where bloggers can convene to all write about the same topic, was hosted by Kathy Gill, a social media consultant and senior lecturer at the University of Washington, who seized on the new social network that is Google+. Still in its infancy, Google+ has been the topic of many-a-tech blog posts. As a former tech writer, I love and hate this stuff. Sometimes I want to slap Mashable right in the "http" and tell them to never do another "Top X Ways [name your industry professionals] Can Use [new social-networking...

• September 1, 2011
• comments

Spot.Us, Byliner, Atavist Are Showing Freelance Writers the Money

by David Cohn

I often joke that an unexpected job duty of Spot.Us is that I've become an agent for freelancers. I like to pretend I'm a Jerry Maguire figure for small independent freelance reporters. They ask me to show them the money or sometimes they want a clip in a big publication. And sometimes at Spot.Us I've got a little ray of hope in a pitch, and I ask which freelancers are "coming with me" as I waive a suitcase in the air. Spot.Us was built with freelancers in mind, a way they could pitch the world and all editors at once...

• June 8, 2011
• comments

Why the New York Times' Pay Model is Similar to NPR and Spot.Us

by David Cohn

From the launch of Spot.Us, I've always said the following: Anyone can tackle the crowdfunded journalism model. In fact, NPR could do it tomorrow and blow me out of the water. It's just about being transparent and giving up control over how donation money gets spent. This model would have more success at the national or international level. This model would have more success if a known brand took the lead. (Again, I always tend to cite NPR.) There has been much opining about the New York Times pay wall that went up this week. I was quoted in a...

• March 30, 2011
• comments

Help Spot.Us Find a Path to Financial Sustainability

by David Cohn

Spot.Us recently launched a new design, so this is an opportune time to write a "State of the Spot" post -- something we haven't done since the website was six months old. I hope to lay out how far we've come and what's on our plate and make a call to arms to the Spot.Us community and anyone else interested in the future of journalism. In the two years since our site has launched, we've funded over 160 projects with the help of 5,000 contributors, a fifth of whom contributed more than once. We've done this in collaboration with 95...

• February 22, 2011
• comments

Spot.Us Survey Shows Support for More Diverse Public Media

by David Cohn

The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy made 15 recommendations on how America can have a bright info-future. One of those recommendations was for increased support for public media predicated on public media efforts to "step up," for lack of a better term.Public media has been on the minds and lips of a lot of Americans. Certainly the last few years have seen a growth in public media across the board from Corporation for Public Broadcasting entities (PBS, NPR) to less formal public media entities like PRX and PRI. Recently, as a follow-up to the...

• January 10, 2011
• comments

How Spot.Us Doubled Its Grant Money with Community-Focused Ads

by David Cohn

There are many things that excite me about Spot.Us. One in particular, which I believe is part of our pathway to sustainability is "community-focused sponsorship" (CFS). It is the main thrust of my fellowship at the Reynolds Journalism Institute. My evolving view of advertising is becoming a passionate topic. In some respects CFS gave me a needed shot of adrenaline into the Spot.Us project. If I'm not pushing boundaries and trying something new, I get bored. To date I still know of no other media entity trying anything exactly like it. So what is community-focused sponsorship? The quick version: We...

• November 16, 2010
• comments

Spot.Us Users: Public Media Higher Quality Than Commercial

by David Cohn

This post was written by Jonathan Peters. The data comes from the Free Press sponsorship on Spot.Us, part of our experiment with the Reynolds Journalism Institute in Community-Focused sponsorship. Profits are killing journalism. Publishers and editors care more about the bottom line than the quality of their reporting. Newsrooms are shrinking, as a result, and good stories have gone untold. The public is worse off because of it. So goes one argument, at least, in the debate about public funding of journalism. It's a hot topic that appears immune to any clear-cut solution, and it's shaking the foundation of what...

• October 4, 2010
• comments

An Anaylsis of Six Journalism Startups

by David Cohn

In the last few weeks there has been some interesting and exciting news in the journalism startup world. I wanted to take some time to highlight new players and provide my own personal analysis. Collaborative Storytelling: Three New Startups Kommons.com Kommons was founded by the young Cody Brown who busted into the conversation with some epic blog posts last fall. Brown and his co-founder taught themselves how to code (this is a bootstrapped operation) and iterated like mad. For that, my hat is off. Disclaimer: I've had the chance to chat with Brown a few times and find him to...

• September 21, 2010
• comments

What the Spot.Us Community Thinks of Objectivity

by David Cohn

The following post comes to us from Sameer Bhuchar, who is helping Spot.Us from Austin. It has been said a thousand times before: The landscape of the modern media is changing. With today's more complex, active Internet ecosystem, the accepted norms of journalism are constantly being rewritten or tossed out all together. The Internet has bypassed the once highly regarded norms of gatekeepers at a news desk, and it now seems to be challenging the long held model of objectivity in journalism. If there is an underlying theme to Spot.Us it is the idea that we expect our community...

• August 31, 2010
• comment

Spot.Us Goes National, Gets Clay Shirky as Sponsor

by David Cohn

Anyone that has followed Spot.Us from the beginning knows we've tried to remain iterative and agile. In the earlier stages of Spot.Us I thought this was one of the larger lessons for journalism-entrepreneurs. I went through the iterative and agile process and tried to document it so others could repeat. I hope to continue this tradition as I get ready for an academic fellowship at the Reynolds Journalism Institute. Indeed, the heart of this post addresses two features of Spot.Us (expansion and community-focused sponsorships) which will be my focus while in Missouri. Inherent to this mindset is the ability to...

• July 27, 2010
• comments

An Ethical Argument for Transparency in Journalism

by David Cohn

In a recent post on my website I examined an ethical argument for transparency. I will continue this internal dialogue with the caveat that I am not a journalism academic. I do not prescribe my beliefs to anyone but myself. This is a disgustingly theoretical post (I promise the next one will be practical up the wahzoo). I should also note the inspiration behind these two posts was a discussion at FOO Camp: Philosophy and Technology - Tim O'Reilly and Damon Horowitz. The First Chapter The first post on this topic hinged on the idea that transparency is necessary for...

• July 22, 2010
• comments

Newsroom Collaborations: The New Culture of Sharing vs. Competing

by David Cohn

At last week's Future Civic Media conference at MIT there was a barcamp session on "collaborations in the newsroom" led by Josh Stearns from Save The News. (See his excellent list of journalism collaborations.) In many ways, this was a continuation of a conversation in San Francisco where Josh took fantastic notes. I hope to return the favor here. Collaboration is a buzzword in journalism. As a result, some of its meaning gets lost, similar to how "social media" can mean just about anything and nothing. Scott Rosenberg summed up the problem very well: There is a professional transition in...

• June 22, 2010
• comments

Community Centered Ads Boost Engagement, Funding at Spot.Us

by David Cohn

The beauty of starting something from scratch is the iterative and agile process I've talked about since before Spot.Us began. In this post I'm going to discuss two new developments at Spot.Us. One is an exciting feature and revenue stream. The other is in relation to our expansion into new regions. For almost two years now, Spot.Us has been growing and evolving. I'm very happy to say that the last month has possibly been the most exciting since our launch. We grew almost 30 percent in terms of users. Even more exciting is that the technology behind Spot.Us is starting...

• June 8, 2010
• comment

Spot.Us Expands to Seattle

by David Cohn

We have been hinting at Seattle as the next Spot.Us city for some time and I'm very excited today, with the click of a few buttons, to make it a reality. It would be a crime to keep Spot.Us limited to the Bay Area and Los Angeles. It would turn us into a non-profit news organization when, as I've said many times, we are a platform. A platform for freelancers to pitch the world (editors and the public) in one fell swoop. Non-profit news organizations can use this platform to fundraise, local papers and bloggers can use this to expand...

• April 14, 2010
• comments

A Plan for Spot.Us to Use Community-Centered Ads

by David Cohn

Perhaps it's ironic for me to write about advertising. Fellow Knight News Challenge winner Dan Pacheco can quote me as once saying "f*&# advertising" and one of the initial inspirations for me to get into journalism was Adbusters Magazine. Below I want to describe a potential advertising model that Spot.Us hopes to employ (and others can steal) along with general thoughts about the diversification of revenue streams.Community Centered Advertising The underlying inspiration for Spot.Us is to give the public a freelance budget so they can help set the editorial agenda. Right now that is done via contributions from their own...

• April 1, 2010
• comments

Spot.Us Adds Assignments, Widgets, Story Updates in Revamp

by David Cohn

Since Spot.Us first launched in late 2008 as a simple wiki, I've wanted this to be a learning and growing endeavor both for myself and for  journalism as a whole. There are so many lessons in starting a non-profit news project, especially one that is unique in its scope and mission like Spot.Us. I hope to share some insight below, but first the news. Today Spot.Us takes a huge step forward with a new design and new features. This was made possible by lead designer Lauren Rabaino and the excellent development team of Erik Sundelof and Dan Newman. Please join...

• February 23, 2010
• comments

The Search for a New Revenue Model in Journalism

by David Cohn

My writing on PBS Idea Lab was introduced to me as a way to publicly discuss the growth of Spot.Us, my Knight News Challenge project. I've received kudos for being honest in my blog posts. I'm comfortable talking about where Spot.Us is falling short, and where we are exceeding expectations. I think we are doing a bit of both -- and trying to adjust to succeed more and fall short less. Hey, that's the nature of iterative projects, which I've always said needs to be at the heart of Spot.Us as a new concept. So let's keep that bit of...

• January 19, 2010
• comment

Case Study in Collaboration: Spot.us, Public Press, and McSweeney's

by David Cohn

I spend a lot of time talking about the notion of "collaboration." So whenever I have a good example of the value of collaboration, I try to highlight it. Only one month after a Spot.Us-funded project was also published in the New York Times, we have another great example of what happens when various partners come together. I like this one in particular because it includes several media entities. I'm talking about The Bay Bridge Explained pitch on Spot.Us, which has been published online by the SF Public Press and distributed in print through McSweeney's San Francisco Panorama and the...

• December 8, 2009
• comments

How the Spot.Us Garbage Patch Story Got to the NY Times

by David Cohn

Today in the New York Times science section you'll find a piece written by Lindsey Hoshaw about the Pacific garbage patch and an accompanying photo slide show. This piece would not have been possible if Spot.Us and a community of over 100 people hadn't come together to fund her trip. It is a great case study for Spot.Us, and arguably the best of the 40-plus projects we've undertaken in the past year. Despite its ambition, and the mound of publicity it generated, the story went off without a hitch. It involved almost every facet of how I imagined Spot.Us could...

• November 10, 2009
• comments

Good, Fast and Cheap: Startups Can Only Pick Two of These

by David Cohn

Whenever people ask me about the process of building a website, here's how I explain their choices: "There is good, fast and cheap -- you get to pick two." Spot.Us has quietly started development again. I'll be putting up sketches of a much needed re-design on the Spot.Us blog soon, but you can see a sneak peek at the bottom of this post, courtesy of Lauren Rabaino. Looking back at what has almost been a full year of work, this is the part of building something from the ground up that plays to one of my strengths. It comes down...

• October 12, 2009
• comment

Spot.Us Expands to L.A. with USC Annenberg

by David Cohn

First: The big news. Spot.Us is expanding to Los Angeles and we are doing so with USC's Annenberg School of Journalism. Needless to say, we are very excited about the opportunities and possibilities. The main Spot.Us homepage will aggregate pitches from both the SF Bay Area and Los Angeles regions. You can go to Subdomains to find pitches specific to those regions: la.spot.us and sfbay.spot.us. As many know, I grew up in Los Angeles (Hamilton High School anyone?) so this is a bit of a home coming for me. I will remain up north running the Bay Area Spot.Us -...

• September 22, 2009
• comments

For News Organizations, Transparency is the New Objectivity

by David Cohn

Back in the spring, I made an analogy about journalism being a game of chess. On the chess  board of journalism, content is King (the most important piece) but collaboration is Queen (the most powerful piece). To extend the analogy further: transparency is the board itself. Unfortunately, freelancing is a horribly antiquated system. It works behind closed doors. Independent freelancers are left out in the cold and have to build personal relationships with editors to get any paid work. These relationships are always one-to-one. This make it an outdated model. It made perfect sense 30 years ago, but now it...

• September 15, 2009
• comments

The Leadership Vacuum in Journalism

by David Cohn

Ideas are cheap; execution is everything. There are several factors that come into play to make the difference between a successful and a failed execution. One of those factors is leadership. There are different kinds of leaders. Some lead from the front. (William Wallace comes to mind.) But, in war at least, we haven't had a general lead from the front since Alexander the Great. It simply drains a person too much to lead from the front, especially on a modern battlefield where too much is happening all at once. Some lead like ants, working hard and getting others to...

• August 5, 2009
• comments

Discussing Spot.Us Business Model with Mother Jones' Steve Katz

by David Cohn

I met Steve Katz of Mother Jones in 2007 at a Personal Democracy Forum conference and he has been a fantastic resource for brain-picking. Recently Katz and I have been having an interesting conversation about the funding model for Spot.Us, the future of non-profit journalism, and other related topics via our blogs. Now that our conversation has turned to the web, I thought I would share this open brain-picking session. Kudos to Steve for starting it up. The recap The conversation began when Katz asked a question about fundraising for Spot.Us, which allows readers to donate to fund individual journalism...

• July 8, 2009
• comments

Spot.Us Maps Out Three-Month Plan for Growth

by David Cohn

If you want to cut to the chase - the most important link is this simple Google Form where we are collecting feedback on our progress. Spot.Us recently had its second community advisory board meeting at Tech Liminal. We experimented with making the meeting more open by inviting new interns, volunteers and people in the community, so that we could have an open discussion about setting goals. We felt it was important to get as much input into this process from different community members in order to create a conversation about the direction of Spot.us as an organization. On the...

• June 17, 2009
• comments

Citizen Journalism Networks Stepping Up Editorial Standards

by David Cohn

I tend to avoid the "professional vs. amateur journalism" debate, saying "I have constructive criticisms for both sides." As we've hit a flash point for traditional news organizations, the evolution of citizen journalism networks like NowPublic, AllVoices and others may shed light on how the media space will resolve. Perhaps the two "opposites" will meet somewhere in the middle or, as I suspect, find out that they are more alike than they ever thought. Recent news in the space has included Orato and Ground Report making shifts to require higher editorial standards in the submissions they accept and publish. Alfred...

• June 10, 2009
• comments

How Crowdfunding at Spot.us Has Worked -- and Fallen Short

by David Cohn

It has been a year since Spot.Us was officially announced as a project and six months since our website launched. So it is time to reflect back on what we have accomplished, where we have succeeded and failed. It is amazing what can happen in six months! It is far easier to look at one's own project, their baby, and gleefully point out where it has surpassed expectations. Don't worry, I will probably do that in this post. At the same time, however, I feel an obligation, perhaps with an extra critical eye, to point out where it can improve....

• May 12, 2009
• comments

Collaboration is Queen: Spot.Us Moving Forward

by David Cohn

There are more updates to spot.us than I can really fit into a MediaShift IdeaLab post. For the list-y version of recent milestones - scroll down to the bottom. But first, I want to highlight a very specific example of forward momentum both for Spot.us and the notion that news organizations don't try new things. I try and avoid the "new media v. old media" debate. What I often say is "I have constructive criticism for both sides." Details on new media criticism: It needs to mature and blossom. Details on old media criticism. It must learn to be agile...

• March 30, 2009
• comments

Spot.Us Deals with the Good and Bad of Limitations

by David Cohn

Long-time readers of Spot.Us updates will know I am a big believer in staying agile and iterative. Take small bites, chew well, rinse and repeat. With that in mind - I am "en route" to visit my developers to do another "dev blitz" to try and get Spot.Us as close to a 2.0 version as I can with limited means. As I've said before - the current version of the site contains about 1/4th of what we've designed (see full but outdated designs here). We have been limited in resources so I've constantly had to pick and choose what features...

• February 16, 2009
• comments

Spot.Us Has Success and Failure in the Same Week

by David Cohn

Spot.Us has just had one of its most exciting weeks chalk full of successes and failures. The most interesting lesson is related to the Oscar Grant shooting in Oakland California. It is a tragic event that occurred where a Bart police officer shot and killed a young man. The entire event, caught on camera, has touched on deep seeded issues of class and racism in Oakland. Subsequent protests turned into civil unrest and the city of Oakland continues to deal with the emotional aftershocks. All this came just four days after we had successfully funded an investigation into the Oakland...

• January 28, 2009
• comments

End of the Year Radical Transparency for Spot.Us

by David Cohn

It is the end of the year and I received some questions from the TIdes Center who are doing due-diligence reports for the Knight Foundation. I've been meaning to do a public "where is Spot.Us" post for some time and since I'm answering all these related questions I thought - why not just go crazy and blog the questions and my answers. If I have to update Knight Foundation - I should update everyone, since in the end I view this as a project owned by the community of people who take interest in it (everyone who has been following...

• December 22, 2008
• comment

Two Weeks, Two Stories, Too Early For A Victory Dance

by David Cohn

It has been two weeks since the "official" launch of Spot.Us. I'm happy with its progress, but I remain unsatisfied. The new media hype has been great. I'm truly honored at how much attention Spot.Us has received, the optimistic and hopeful remarks, the young journalists with questions, etc. But that will die down. With the initial hype of our launch we've managed to fund two different stories: "Return of the Hooverville" and "When the Longevity Revolution Hits Your Town." Together they represent $1,550 donated by 53 people who gave an average of $29 each (some of that money was raised...

• November 24, 2008
• comments

Spot.Us: Launching a Site and Being Iterative

by David Cohn

Anybody that's been following my posts on IdeaLab should notice a pattern. Growing a Community and the Importance of Being Iterative Eliminating the Fear of Being Open and the Importance of Being Iterative Starting Small and the Importance of Being Iterative I'm always trying to chop Spot.Us into small and executable steps. Test an idea, see how the community reacts and if it's positive, build a more stable infrastructure around it. The Spot.Us wiki, which has been moderately successful with three and a half pitches funded, is a perfect example. It was very informative and helped us refine our designs...

• November 10, 2008
• comments

Eliminating the Fear of Being Open

by David Cohn

Spot.Us is about to hit the ground running. We hope to have something to show in mid-to-late October (assuming everything stays on schedule). We've gotten here through a couple of stages. The Cliffs Note version of that is as follows. Stage one: Narratives After realizing Spot.Us would become a reality I got writing. Essentially this was a chance to toss ideas around and create a vision for the site. The basic approach was: Define the types of users that would interact with spot.us and then write out their experience of the site - and what they'd see on each page...

• September 12, 2008
• comment

Growing a Community and The Importance of Being Iterative

by David Cohn

As always: If you just want the status update of Spot.Us as a project -scroll down to the bottom for a nice digestible list of what's going down. Or - keep reading for detailed thoughts. This will be cross-posted at the Spot Us blog. Two months ago I decided that instead of sitting on my hands and waiting for a "tada-moment" to launch spot.us, we should just get started by using a wiki and a blog."Best decision ever" (said in the voice Jeff Albertson).Producing something from nothing Granted, the site can best be described as fugly (take a guess what...

• August 28, 2008
• comments

How Can We Get People to "Geek Out" About Journalism?

by David Cohn

If you just want the progress report on Spot.Us - scroll to the bottom. If you want to peer into my mind, read on.If I want to explain my job as founder of Spot.Us in one sentence, I'll just say "I'm fundraising for independent journalists to do local investigations." Obviously it's much more involved than that, but depending on how much energy I have, it works. But what's the mission of Spot.Us? Perhaps of any Knight News Challenge project? What follows won't be a personal mission statement, but could be construed as brainstorming to that end. Right now I'm fundraising...

• August 8, 2008
• comments

The Blogosphere Needs to Mature -- But How?

by David Cohn

I'm leaving Chicago, physically tired but mentally invigorated. 1. I was inspired by the loft and good natured vibe of Knight's mission. 2. Took time to rethink my personal blogging motivation and experience. 3. Worked more on pushing spot.us into existence. (latest design work here). But in this post I want to take a moment to examine the evolution of technology reporting, particularly from large/mainstream technology blogs (think TechCrunch). I am in part inspired by a blog post from Robert Scoble on how tech blogs have failed. The reason I'm interested in this space isn't just because I'm a huge...

• July 29, 2008
• comment

The Bull Pen is Active at Spot Us

by David Cohn

We raised $250 in 10 days to support a journalist. On July 3rd I announced that Spot.Us created a wiki that could accomplish our basic goals: The wiki would allow groups of people to come together around topics, let journalists create pitches and using a 3rd party e-commerce solution, we could crowdfund. Two weeks later, we have successfully raised enough money for our first example of "community funded reporting." Best part: You can duplicate this. I've used no secret technology and I tried to detail the steps I took at the Spot Us blog. A note about this first example:...

• July 14, 2008
• comments

Starting Small and the Importance of Being Iterative

by David Cohn

The short story: People are starting to ask me how they can get involved in Spot.Us. The site won't really be ready until the Fall, but I hate telling people to wait. In an effort to start community building, so we don't lose track of ideas and to keep everything transparent, I'm happy to point people to the Spot Us Community Wiki. It's not high-tech but this wiki, combined with a blog and a third party e-commerce solution is enough to organize "community funded reporting." If you are a citizen and have a story idea or a reporter and want...

• July 3, 2008
• comments

Representative Journalism: Funding Beats or Stories

by David Cohn

I'm on the "board of advisers" for Representative Journalism and Leonard Witt, who coined the phrase, is also on the board of advisers for Spot Us. So - I thought I'd take a post to look at how Witt defines Representative Journalism. It is very much in-tune with Spot Us. In fact, whenever I explain Spot Us - I also bring up RepJ as an experiment playing in the same space. In my mind the only real difference between RepJ and Spot Us is the scope of what we are trying to raise money for. More on that below. The...

• June 26, 2008
• comments

The Sweet Nectar of Experimentation

by David Cohn

Now, it may turn out that this low-hanging fruit is poisonous. But aren't you glad that somebody is at least going to give it a good honest bite to find out? More importantly - aren't you glad it's somebody who shares the values of the news industry.

• June 19, 2008
• comments