Idea Lab

The Search for a New Revenue Model in Journalism

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

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
• 1 comment

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

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

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
• No comments

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

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

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
• 2 comments

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

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

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
• 1 comment

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

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

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
• 2 comments

For News Organizations, Transparency is the New Objectivity

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

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
• 7 comments

The Leadership Vacuum in Journalism

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

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
• 4 comments

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

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

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
• No comments

Spot.Us Maps Out Three-Month Plan for Growth

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

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
• No comments

Citizen Journalism Networks Stepping Up Editorial Standards

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

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
• 8 comments

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

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

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
• 2 comments

Collaboration is Queen: Spot.Us Moving Forward

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

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
• No comments

Spot.Us Deals with the Good and Bad of Limitations

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

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
• 2 comments

Spot.Us Has Success and Failure in the Same Week

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

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
• 3 comments

End of the Year Radical Transparency for Spot.Us

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

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
• 1 comment

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

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

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
• No comments

Spot.Us: Launching a Site and Being Iterative

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

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
• No comments

Eliminating the Fear of Being Open

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

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
• 1 comment

Growing a Community and The Importance of Being Iterative

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

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
• No comments

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

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

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
• 3 comments

The Blogosphere Needs to Mature -- But How?

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

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
• 1 comment

The Bull Pen is Active at Spot Us

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

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
• 2 comments

Starting Small and the Importance of Being Iterative

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

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
• No comments

Representative Journalism: Funding Beats or Stories

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

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
• 3 comments

The Sweet Nectar of Experimentation

by David Cohn
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

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
• 4 comments