Below you will find.

•    How did this start?
•    The connection with the Times.
•    What all this represented in a nutshell.
•    The real test: fundraising
•    The unfolding story: Lindsey's live reporting
•    Conclusion/what can be improved.

How Did This Start?

I first met Lindsey Hoshaw after speaking at Stanford's journalism school about Spot.Us. Our first meeting was uneventful. The only impression I was left with was her time in Los Angeles, which gave us something to connect on.

A few months later, however, Lindsey contacted me about the Pacific garbage patch. It was a story I knew of through Manuel Maqueda, who himself has undertaken recent reporting efforts around plastic in the ocean.

Lindsey explained that she had been given a seat on the boat with Captain Moore, the man who first discovered the Pacific garbage patch. After reaching out to the science editor at the New York Times, she found that they were interested in the story. There was, however, one giant hurdle: she needed to pay her own way on the trip, and getting to the middle of the Pacific Ocean wasn't cheap.

The Connection with the Times

This pitch excelled where many others have gone awry, and for that I must give praise to the Times. In most Spot.Us experiences, the larger a news organization, the slower it is to get approval to try something with Spot.Us because of our radically different approach. In past attempts with mainstream organizations, I've sat in countless meetings only to spin wheels. Those experiences are actually the inspiration for this blog post, "News Organizations In a Battle Against Inertia."

My hat is off the Times. They interfaced with Spot.Us as if they were a lean and mean startup. I spent half a day at the Times talking with various decision-makers who agreed to entertain the idea further if we drafted a pitch. Once the pitch was approved, all we had to do was make it live and let them know. I am still in awe of that process. It contrasts with everything I've experienced with other larger media organizations, and it's a testament to why the Times is not just the paper of record but also leading the charge into the digital future.

What All This Represented in a Nutshell

A freelancer and a news organization wanted to work together, but they needed to grease the wheels with some money. This is not uncommon. News organizations have a shrinking staff and budget. They must rely more on freelancers, but also don't want to burn through the entire freelance budget on a single story. This is one reason why we are seeing less original long-form reporting. Spot.Us acted as the grease. I hope we can continue to grease the wheels between freelancers and the public and with other news organizations.

The Real Test: Fundraising

At the time, this pitch had the most ambitious fundraising goal Spot.Us had ever undertaken. I am happy to say that a new project with McSweeney's and the Public Press may surpass it. Fundraising is never easy, but a few things favored this pitch.

1. Lindsey is an ideal Spot.Us reporter. She is passionate and unafraid to show it. Her desire to report on this topic pours out of her in the Spot.Us video pitch. I only wish every Spot.Us reporter could show their interest in a story like her. Perhaps, in the future, the "video pitch" will be required for a Spot.Us pitch. Furthermore, Lindsey was unafraid to reach out to her network of friends, family and social networking sites to ask for support.

2. The Times followed up our initial efforts with a story of their own, "Many Checkbooks One Newspaper." The piece by Clark Hoyt examined the growing role of public support in journalism and highlighted Lindsey's pitch. I would never speak on behalf of the Times, but I like to think this was their way of putting out a test: "if we ask, will you give?" The answer was a big "yes" from a variety of folks for a multitude of reasons. Some donated in support of the Times. Others did because they knew of, and want to know more about, the garbage patch. Perhaps others donated just because of how fresh Spot.Us seemed; and perhaps others did so because they connected with Lindsey as an individual

Regardless, we raised $6,000 on Spot.Us before I could even go in and change the fundraising goal to $10,000 (the amount Lindsey truly needed). We used Facebook Causes to get the remainder.

The Unfolding Story

Once funding was secured, Lindsey didn't rest. She blogged regularly throughout her experience - including using a satellite phone to get online while on the boat. She saved her best photos for the Times upon her return, but she did not ignore the interest of people that supported her trip. She kept them involved and engaged. The best wrap-up of her posts from the ship can be found here.

The best pitches on Spot.Us are those that treat their subject as an unfolding story. KALW's "Crime Courts and Communities" pitch is another great example of this "beat blogging" approach.

Conclusion/What Can be Improved

Spot.Us needs a new design. There, I said it! (We've gotten started).

We need to express our mission clearer, and improve functionality/features of the site (new designs coming soon). We are far from perfect. This is not a post to simply pat us on the back and claim/whine, "if only more reporters were as open as Lindsey, or more news organizations as willing as the Times  Spot.Us would be the best thing since the Walter Lippmann." That sentiment would not only be naive -- it would shift the burden of improvement from Spot.Us to the culture of journalism.

Spot.Us does represent a fundamental shift from traditional journalism culture. While that is a hurdle for us, it is something we must overcome by highlighting exemplary projects like this, and figuring out how they can be repeated. With that in mind, this case study would be incomplete without the following section.

We Need

1.    Other ways to support reporting. There are other ways to support reporters beyond whipping out a wallet. Distributed reporting can be huge, and Spot.Us should dabble in this. Perhaps we will shift from "community funded reporting" to "community powered reporting" or "community supported reporting."

2.    Facebook, Twitter and more. The Times article would not have had a big impact without Twitter.

3. A clearer way to articulate what is going on with every pitch to any visitor that comes to our site.

4. Your ideas!

Finally

1. Good and fast: If you went for good and fast it most likely means you hired top notch folks. This is a boon to any website project starting out -- but it also means you need to watch your cash flow because it won't be cheap. Unless you are rolling in cash, the cost should be a concern. Still, going this route can save you money in the long run. If you are able to get something to market before you cut off development, you'll be able to lean on what you've produced and it will work reliably. In contrast, I know plenty of projects that went with option number two...
2. Fast and cheap: If it works out then you've won the lottery. Again, I'm not saying quality is impossible here. But I personally know projects that went the fast and cheap route and in the long run it hurt them. What they ended up bringing to market failed. Most users are not as forgiving as they are to Twitter. If your site breaks, they won't come back. It often takes an organization twice as much money and time to build a stable website if the initial site was built fast and cheap. If you are not a tech-minded person, you might wonder why everyone doesn't outsource or go with the cheapest labor out there (and there are cheap developers on the market). Think of this scenario: you could pay an Amish wood craftsman to build an heirloom cabinet that will last generations, or you can get something from Ikea that will last two to five years and require some assembly and maintenance on your part --but will cost a tenth of the price. There is no right or wrong answer. It often depends on where you are in life. When I was in college it was Ikea all the way, baby! In either case the trade-offs are apparent. That's the difference between options number one and number two.
3. Good and cheap: The typical scenario here is that you have a great web developer (an Amish craftsman of code) who is ready to donate some of his/her time to your project. This is great. It means you can get quality at a cheap price. But this also usually means the development comes at a pace dictated by the volunteer, not you. Set all the deadlines you want in your mind -- the reality is that you're at their mercy. Again, this isn't a bad thing. It's just a trade-off. The good news is that when something does finally get put out, you'll have quality and it won;t have broken the piggy bank. If you aren't in a rush this can even be ideal (for example, maybe it's something you are working on as a volunteer as well).

Now, as promised, below is a sneak-peak at a rough redesign of Spot.Us. (It's very rough -- see the Spot.Us blog for details).

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 - but will be working closely with folks in Los Angeles building up our SoCal presence.

What Does This Mean?

We will continue to move forward. If the Los Angeles launch goes smooth there is no reason we couldn't expand to another city soon. This can be done in partnership with another organization (media company, university, etc) or just by Spot.Us itself.

It has been 10-months since Spot.Us officially launched with support from the Knight Foundation (who remain fantastic supporters). There have been a few highlights in the Spot.Us world.

• I first announced that I was working on Spot.Us (winning a Knight News Challenge my advice on that here)  . The site launched five months later.
• Six month "state of the spot" after our official launch - including a list of some thing's we'd been up to
  
• Spot.Us starts to build a strategic business plan (as a community). - We will have another one of these open brainstorm meetings soon!

We have been observing and learning along the way. Without a doubt the concept holds. In fact, we've been joined now by other community funded reporting sites (Global For Me, PayyAttention, KickStarter, ReelChanges and others). But only Spot.Us focuses on local, long form reporting. To my knowledge we are also the only one that is situated to work with multiple news organizations at a time to collaborate publicly with citizens or each other.

As such - that is what you can expect more of from Spot.Us: Focusing on our strengths, providing services to news organizations that want to participate, creating a new marketplace for freelancers to sell their work to the public or organizations and for community members to take control and set the news agenda themselves.

Agile and Iterative Development Begins Again

Long time Spot.Us community members will know I am a big believer in agile and iterative development.

• Launching a site and being iterative
  
• Eliminating the fear of being open and iterative
  
• Growing a community and being iterative
  

Unfortunately - we've strayed from this mission for the last 4-6 months. But it isn't for lack of want - more like lack of funds ;)

I am happy to announce that we have new developers at Spot.Us who will be working closely with me to take the site to its full 2.0 vision. I want to thank Hashrocket for the development on the site so far. They are, hands down, a FANTASTIC shop to work with. I would recommend them to anyone looking for Ruby on Rails work in a heartbeat and I hope to work with them again soon. I consider them not just colleagues but friends.

But for the immediate future I am excited to be working with two developers (they'll be introduced soon) who will work on the day-to-day of the site, getting it in a position for what we need to do.

What We Need To Do

SO MUCH!

• There is a list of site development needs (feel free to add, please don't delete). This includes some redesign and some needed features.
• There are incredibly ambitious projects to support - pick your favorite. Donating just $10 can make a HUGE difference.
• Define what Spot.Us is and what Spot.Us isn't: a higher level conversation that we will be having with advisors and the community.
• Figuring out the three sided market: Community members, reporters and news organizations. We are a service organization for all three. But three sided markets are tough to pin down. I am convinced it can be done.

Personal Thought and Rant

Along with the press release I get to write this blog post and it would be a missed opportunity not to reflect on the last 1.5 years of my life and the last 10 months since Spot.Us officially launched. I am more dedicated than ever towards the concept of "community funded reporting" and Spot.Us as a tool to accomplish that. I do believe it will be a part of journalism's future no matter what name we call it.

But I have also come to realize that there is no silver bullet. Journalism needs multiple revenue streams. That is also why I believe "content is King, collaboration is Queen." It isn't an either/or scenario with citizen journalism and I've spent hours upon hours thinking about what these terms all mean. In the attempt to zen out on all this I've learned from many people. I want to thank them all and I want to thank everyone that has been a positive influence on me and Spot.Us so far. In truth Spot.Us belongs to everyone that participates in it. So if you think we are doing okay - give yourself a pat on the back. You are making it happen, I'm just a conduit.

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 needs to be re-thought. That will only happen when the process of journalism, including the business processes of news organizations comes out from under its cloak.

It was in conversations with Steve Katz that I realized one of the breakthroughs of Spot.Us is that we help make the process of journalism transparent.

Traditionally, news organizations are transparent with their finished work. "Extra, extra, read all about it."

That is necessary but in my opinion it is no longer sufficient.

If transparency is the new objectivity -- more than our finished product must be revealed.

In a discussion with another editor last week I realized another transparency boundary Spot.Us is pushing on organizations that collaborate with us: We force them to be transparent about where they spend their money with freelancers.

Freelancing is outdated

Thirty years ago, I would probably snail mail my pitches to editors with a self-addressed envelope inside so editors could write me back. Today the Internet allows freelancers to email pitches. But that seems to be the ONLY evolution in the process. Our communication in the process of procuring work, writing stories and editing stories is faster, but fundamentally happens in one-to-one relationships. The public never sees this. Nor do they see the pain of waiting -- which was the topic of one of my earliest blog posts from 2005 -- for responses, edits, or checks.

Here's what I wrote last week to the editor: "To work with Spot.Us you have to be transparent about where you would spend your freelance budget. Every organization that works with Spot.Us is transparent about where they are putting their dollars or at least where they are putting their editorial efforts."

The editor responded that it would be scary to make an editor's freelance budget so public.

That's exactly the point!

We are supposed to shine a light on other industries, public and private. How can we be expected to be a public beacon if we ourselves hide behind a veil of secrecy?

Some valid counterpoints

As always, I want to push boundaries but recognize that some aren't going to go anywhere. A few reasons why.

1. The process of journalism (editing, re-writing, etc.) is boring. We can make it transparent for the nerds who are interested, but let's not scare our audience off. Also: If you are investigating the mafia you don't need to title that in your Spot.Us pitch (I'm not THAT young and naive).
2. It takes energy to be transparent. Just because an organization isn't transparent doesn't mean they are nefarious -- it simply means there's 2,134,241 other things that they're focused on instead of this issue.
   
3. You tell me!

I recognize I come at this from one extreme. I believe transparency is the new objectivity and that news organizations are hurting in part because as large institutions they are ill-equipped to be transparent. Here's how they are ill-equipped:

1. They are ill-equipped to be transparent in their personalities: It's okay to have a voice. Personally, I'm sick of the traditional news voice. But it's the only one they have.
   
2. They are ill-equipped to be transparent in their editorial processes. Distributed reporting is an emerging art and large news organizations  have yet to master it. (For some good examples of distributed reporting, see NewAssignment.Net, OffTheBus.Net, ProPublica's efforts and this Nieman Journalism article.)
3. They are ill-equipped to be transparent in their business processes. Distributed funding is also an emerging field. (See Spot.Us, ReelChanges.org, Global For Me.)
4. They are ill-equipped to be transparent in their day-to-day operations: It's a dream of mine -- a newsroom cafe.

As always: I say this not to be an "anti-old media" person. That's not what I'm about. I bring it up in an effort to point to areas where I see room (and need) for improvement.

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 follow in line. Others lead like owls, giving sage advice in a calm and zen-like manner. Still others lead like puppies, bringing an unparalleled enthusiasm to galvanize others into action.

So the question is: What types of leadership does journalism need now?

A generation ago, we needed people who could take small newspapers and turn them into thriving businesses, people who could lead because of their stature, cut-throat competitiveness, and business savvy. The journalism industry has different goals and needs now. Today, we need flexibility, innovation, community, collaboration and tech-savvy, to name a few things.

Which begs the question: Do we need new leaders? This isn't a question relating to specific people, but characteristic traits.

I have often used the chessboard as an analogy for the state of journalism: "Content is king, collaboration is queen, the board itself is transparency." But the game of chess needs a leader, somebody who can step back, look at the board and make decisions.

Just as a William Wallace-type general would be ineffective on a modern battlefield, could a William Randolph Hearst make it in today's journalism environment? What new characteristics would Hearst need to nurture? What would be outright foolish in today's culture? More importantly, is journalism suffering a brain drain? What new leaders are we losing to other industries?

I went to my Tweeple for some thoughts.

What do you think? Share your thoughts on the leadership needed in journalism in the comments below or by replying on Twitter to my tweet (which will then show up above).

The recap

The conversation began when Katz asked a question about fundraising for Spot.Us, which allows readers to donate to fund individual journalism projects that they would like to see completed:

The basic fundraising model is this: the donor supports not the organization, but the project sponsored by the organization...The question, I think, is whether and how folks will shift their loyalty from the project to the organization (there's a second question, too, which is whether this deeper level of donor loyalty matters for Spot.Us-like organizations -- maybe I'll have to go have a conversation with Dave about this, huh?

That question sparked the start of the more formal conversation between Katz and I, as he laid out some questions about Spot.Us's approach and status. I thought I'd have some fun, so I responded with a video post, in which I talked about Spot.Us's core values of transparency, immediacy, and control (for the donor, that is). I also asked Katz some questions about whether or not Spot.Us is being naive in its fundraising model or if it can learn a thing or two from how Mother Jones raises money.

Katz responded:

So it's not donor choice per se where Spot.us is innovating. As Dave notes, it's the possibility that interested community members connect with reporters on stories and issues they care about. Not only does that increase the possibility that people will actually pay for stuff they want, but it makes the reporting process more transparent (this was what made Chris Albritton's Back to Iraqso damned exciting back then).

Adding Transparency to Funding

Katz actually brought something to light for me. I often say that "donating to journalism isn't new -- it is just having control over where your money goes that makes Spot.Us interesting." In fact, I use NPR as an example all the time. They could blow me out of the water tomorrow by adding transparency to where donations go (and I would be
totally fine if NPR did adopt community-funded reporting).

Katz points out that what community-funded reporting represents isn't just participation through donating -- it brings a new level of transparency to journalism.

Increasingly, Spot.Us does reporter debriefs either mid-way through or at the end of an article. We use BlogTalkRadio right now and we invite donors to get on the phone and chat with the reporter about what they are learning and digging up. There is an added service in here. The community in "community-funded reporting" can get involved and this, as Katz notes, makes the reporting more transparent and accountable.

People often say that reporting for an ethnic newspaper is much more difficult than a large metro because the reporter is part of the community they are reporting on. They are more accountable. I'd say the same goes for a community-funded reporter. In fact, I've been told as much. One reporter even printed out the list of donors and tacked it to their bulletin board as a reminder that he was responsible to a list of engaged citizens. The big step Spot.Us is taking, according to Katz, isn't one of giving donors transparency, but it's making the reporting itself more transparent.

That sounds beautiful in a blog post, but as noted (and Katz concurs) it might be part of the reason why it is hard to get other news organizations to adopt the Spot.Us model. They have to be ready to put themselves out there in the open from day one. I have a million reasons why it's a good idea to be transparent -- but I'll save my "pitch" for
another blog post.

Let's table that -- but keep it in the back of our minds, because I'll come back to it: "It's hard to get news organizations to jump on board because of a cultural shift."

Traffic Measures Impact

Katz and I also discuss traffic. I still try and avoid traffic as a measure of success, but Katz is right in pointing out that it isn't just a metric of success, it also measures impact. Impact is something that donors want.

A good example: A recent Spot.Us story we did with AllVoices has a nice "number of views" metric. I can see that as of writing this blog post that the video has received almost 5,000 views. That is a boon to donors; they want to know that the story they support is seen by others. When Spot.Us did a story with the Oakland Tribune, fundraising was easier because people knew the editorial would be tight and that the finished story would get distribution.

Raising traffic, however, is a beast in itself and one I don't want to get locked into. Growing traffic can be self-defeating and I know from my Digg days how ugly and distracting it can be. I want to focus on making good journalism happen.

That's why Spot.Us is also a platform that is designed to engage with partnering news organizations like Mother Jones, the Center for Investigative Reporting, the San Francisco Chronicle and others (The new Pocantico Watchdogs have me salivating).

In truth this goes back to Jeff Jarvis saying "Do what you do best and link to the rest." It goes for covering topics on the web but I also think it needs to be applied in
how we run Spot.Us.

What we do best

• Create tools for fundraising of journalism projects via community-funded reporting.
• Do our own outreach on behalf of journalism projects.
• Create a sense of community around journalism projects and expose the sausage-making to those who are interested.

What news organizations do best:

• The editorial for journalism projects.
• The distribution of journalism projects.
• Spread word within their own communities about how to get engaged.

I think some start-ups try to recreate the entire media sphere. That's a mistake -- one that Spot.Us has been pushed into from time to time (and will probably happen again) whenever we don't have a partnering organization to share the load. Hence the irony of the situation above: What we do best requires a cultural shift and that's why we are slow to find partnering news organizations even though actually partnering with us is as quick as clicking a button.

Katz suggests hiring somebody who can manage our relationships with other news organizations. I wouldn't be against another hire at all but we probably won't be able to for budgetary reasons.

Instead I want to build out the platform so that these partnerships can be more lightweight. Right now, it is confusing for news organizations to know all the different ways they can partner with us. Increasingly that is a part of the business development plan that we are working on that I think will be crucial.

News Org or Platform?

It still goes back to the question: Are we a news organization or a platform?

I think we have to be a bit of both, but without falling into the trap described earlier of trying to recreate the entire media sphere. So what parts of Spot.Us are a news organization and what parts are a platform serving news organizations as a main customer?

That is something we are still figuring out. It is where we start to look a bit more like a non-profit version of mediabistro. It's a community for reporters and news organizations to meet and work together -- but they are doing so in public and that way we can bring community funding into the mix.

As for Katz's advice on traditional fundraising: A spaghetti dinner is on the way. We don't have all the details yet but folks who donated to the City Budget Watchdog pitch are invited to a meetup on July 13 at the Grotto where we will talk about the reporting we've done so far and what is to come next. Afterward we will meander to 21st Amendment (details to come).

And now -- back to Katz: In my first response I asked if there was something naive about the Spot.Us model. It seems that it isn't naive -- just a little "out there" still.

But Mother Jones as an organization is already somewhat "out there." You have been pushing the boundaries of running a non-profit news organization for some time. Politics aside -- nobody can knock what you have all accomplished.

But when life is hard you have to change. And times are tough. Even the New York Times is re-thinking itself. So my question is: How does Mother Jones, a much larger organization than Spot.Us, approach all this? Are there plans being plotted? Moves being considered? Are things pushing on as usual? What is on your radar that I'm not aware of?

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 Hermida wrote a post on Reportr.net titled "Orato turns its back on citizen journalism," in which he notes that the site used to focus on first person narratives of events but:

Instead the focus is on "concrete and trustworthy information that is objective and under-reported." The owner and founder of Orato, Sam Yehia, said the changes were made to "further professionalize the site, focus its newsworthy content, create and enforce a viable business model and keep pace with Web 2.0 standards."

When I met up with longtime friend Rachel Sterne, founder of Ground Report, at the Beyond Broadcast conference she explained that her network was making a similar change. While I'm one example shy of a trend, I think these two shifts warrant
some thought.

Rachel Sterne explains the changes happening at Ground Report:

What is the shift on Ground Report?

From what I gathered, there are four main shifts in Ground Report's editorial policy.

1. Content from new users goes through a longer vetting period. Ground Report is trading speed for accountability.
2. Content from a trusted user or source skips this vetting period -- but only because the contributor has proven themselves.
3. Expanding the powers of volunteer editors, who can now edit anything on the site. Again, these are trusted contributors.
4. A part-time managing editor who is in the process of writing editorial guidelines. This is a tough line to walk because they want to preserve the uniqueness of the writers' voice but also make sure they are up to the higher editorial standards.

The reasoning

Sterne explained the logic behind the new system: "It is something that in the commercial world has just started to enter the dialogue while it seems obvious in an academic world." There are several reasons why the policy change makes sense to me:

1. Trading speed and accountability seems like a no brainer to me. Twitter has come on the scene to dominate the speed world, which means citizen journalism networks can offer an added value of accountability.
2. Ground Report, Now Public, All Voices and others are looking to syndicate their content to larger distributors. To do that, they must provide a sense of trustworthiness.
3. iReport, YouTube and other large user-generated sites have begun highlighting well produced work from dedicated contributors while making the larger mass of content they host harder to find.
4. Some organizations like The UpTake have had this policy since day one of venture.
   

Even more interesting, according to Sterne, contributions on Ground Report have dropped 50 percent in the month since the site began implementing the changes, but traffic has increased 10 percent. That seems to be a trade off that most publishers would take -- giving them a more streamlined workflow and process along with higher traffic.

Some things to note

According to the Wikipedia page on Citizen Journalism:

Allvoices was also the first citizen journalism site to measure the credibility of contributed reports and their authors, providing readers with a gauge launched in March 2009 for assessing the accuracy of news accounts.

I am friends with several of the folk at AllVoices and hope to follow up with them next time I speak with them.

Most people don't know, but I am the editor in chief of citizen journalism network Broowaha. We have had similar conversations with our own members and internal team. Not surprisingly, some of the most dedicated contributors have voiced a preference towards structure, guidelines and policy.

Where are we left?

I don't claim to have a crystal ball, but I wouldn't be surprised if more citizen journalism networks make this shift. I think it is perfectly possible for these networks to be picky about what they publish without being exclusive. This will be a fine line to walk so as not to lose their citizen journalism souls as they try and up their game.

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. This post will include the good, the bad and the ugly.

Why? 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.

I'll break down our progress into four parts: Pre-launch, post-launch, maturing (the phase I think we are in right now) and the future. Then perhaps I'll feel obliged to do a personal rant.

Pre Launch

During the pre-launch Spot.Us did a very good job of being open and public with our ideas and process of development. We uploaded our designs before they had been finished. We filmed some of the developers hard at work and we were very careful and analytical about the means by which we produced the final platform.

Having the most hindsight here I still believe this part of the project was handled very well. The biggest fault was not knowing when to change mindsets (I'll get into that next) and not keeping our blogging of the process up. Part of what makes Spot.Us interesting is how open we want to be about everything, from how the project is made to what journalism projects we are tackling. On our blog we want to continue to open up the process of "community funded reporting."

Post-launch: Setting up our weak spots.

By the numbers Spot.Us is doing very well. It has been 24 weeks since our "official" launch and we have funded 23 stories in total -- with another two or three on the way. One story a week is far better than I expected. I cannot thank the community of supporters enough. In the end -- this is not "my" project. It belongs to those that want to get involved -- reporters, editors and community members.

Managing that growth: This has probably been the biggest problem for Spot.Us. 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.

From the moment a pitch is up -- reporters should start working with or without a peer review editor. Thus things change as we go as we inevitably get more partners and every partner is different. Hence - collaboration is wet.

Increasingly it comes down to playing to our strengths. With a staff of two we must pick and choose our battles carefully. I'm not sure we have always done this in the past - but we are starting to think less like a web platform and more like a journalistic organization all the time.

Which brings us too....

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.

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 reporter's 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. In short it comes down to relevance and original reporting. Nothing shocking, I know - but it is easy to lose sight of this.

A change in mindset: Recently I've had to make a conscious mind-shift from web-entrepreneur back to being a journalist. Obviously I want to grow the platform out more (we recently added PayPal) - but in the end it is a journalism project and reporting benefits from having deadlines, editorial feedback and more. I hinted at this above. It comes down to Spot.Us not just being a platform but a community site where Kara and I act as editorial managers as much as platform creators.

The Waiting Game: There is too much waiting on Spot.Us. We wait to get funded, we wait to get reporting and if we sell the story we wait to go through another editorial/publishers cycle. I'm fine if investigations take a long time to complete, but we shouldn't be silent during that timeframe.

This is somewhat ironic because in past projects managing citizen journalists or volunteer reporters I found people to be very responsive and fast acting. 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. This is why we built blogs for each pitch.

They have been underutilized by reporters thus far -- but going forward we are looking for individuals who are motivated by the journalism and not the money and will get started covering a topic right away. Obviously our goal is to fund individuals so they can make a living with their reporting -- but it is a give and take. A "pull yourself up by your bootsraps" situation.

The Future - Potential Solutions - New Things to Try.

The Beat Pitch: A pitch that is also a beat. I'm excited to be working again with The Public Press on a pitch that isn't a one-off story, but a three month beat to cover the city budget in San Francisco. We've quietly launched it this week. Reporting will start soon. Check out the "City Budget Blues." Even better subscribe to the blog's RSS and you'll get updates on our progress and perhaps some incentive to donate.

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. And with the money that is refunded -- I hope we can do another version of this story in a different location with a different news organization! Perhaps the story will live on for two or three generations?!?!

More Selective in the reporters: In the beginning Spot.Us let anyone create pitches and we would take them down if they proved unresponsive or raised any red flags. While we still want to be inclusive (proof of it in this pitch from two high school students) we are putting reporters through a slightly more rigorous screening process.

Wonder why: Yes - we got burned. One reporter who we successfully funded has gone M.I.A. We will be writing about this more publicly later on the Spot.Us blog. This happens in all industries for all kinds of reasons. I won't dwell on it, as this reporter wasted enough of our time already. But I will learn from it that reporters need to show a history of following through. We owe that to the community. The story in question will most likely be canceled (assuming the reporter doesn't suddenly appear with a great explanation) and the donations will be returned via credits on the site. Hopefully these credits will be re-invested into a similar story we already have up with a reporter I can personally vouch for.

So we have a fine line to walk here. We want to be inclusive and will work with high school students, but those students had to prove to us they were serious by creating a one minute sample video. They did and so far they have kept to every deadline we've given. Expect the first in their two part series in the next week!

Time to stand up straight

Lately I've been saying that "Spot.Us has been crawling along." At only six months we can even sit on our butt without our giant heads making us fall over!!!

But I suspect we are ready to stand tall very soon. With the right partnerships we could be funding and reporting on some very exciting and serious stuff rather soon. That is what we are aiming for and I will not rest until we are working with those organizations. This will allow Spot.Us to play to its strengths and rest assured that the editorial is being handled in the most serious of manners.

What to expect next?

More pitches that are formed like beats, created by Spot.Us or others organizations, with reporting starting right away. This will be the marketing material to help garner donations.

More in-person events. We enjoy them, we believe in "actual" social networking and we want to have a positive influence on the community.

Expanding to new regions. This is going to happen. Perhaps very soon - and potentially with some really cool partners. More on that if things work out.

More collaborations with really cool partners. No discussions were "off the record" but just in case I'd rather not name the organizations we are talking with. Instead I'll just say - they would add a level of legitimacy and journalistic integrity that Spot.Us needs. I understand that I can be viewed as a "young punk kid trying something very cute" (thanks for the pat on the head), but that would be mistaking the messenger for the message. Community funded reporting has worked (23 times already) and if we can convince some of the more serious Bay Area journalism players to try it out we will figure out just how ambitious we can be. They will allow us to strive further and reach a greater audience.

With this next wave of pitches/stories almost finished and a new wave coming in (they really do come in waves, either by coincidence or a result of our small team taking on only so much at a time) our goal is to be as transparent as possible with our progress (more blogging).

More players to the team - NewMaya or Kara Andrade

It would be an absolute tragedy not to give sincere kudos, thanks, merits, badges and more to one Kara Andrade. Her title is "community organizer" but in conversation I refer to her as my business partner. She has been a perfect match. A Yin to my Yang. We have a similar energy but often different views on how things should proceed. The best part about this - she is never afraid to call me out on my B.S. That is precisely what I was looking for and although frustrating at times (everyone likes to think their B.S. is easy to swallow) I can't thank her enough. The project would not have grown in the last three-four months since she came on board.

There are two organizations that have downloaded the Spot.Us code and are attempting to launch their own versions. I am in talks with at least two other organizations that might try the same thing. Taking the code isn't as simple as clicking a few buttons to launch a Wordpress blog - but the cost of launching a community funded reporting site using our code is far cheaper than building it yourself. As such - I'm offering any assistance I can to them or others that might attempt this. Hopefully we can get it down to a science in the future.

Up next: We have a resident blogger who will be introducing herself shortly on the Spot.us blog - so stay tuned!!!

Personal Rant Time

What can one really say once they've launched a startup? A nonprofit startup at that (two strikes). It is a roller coaster ride. I continue to stay as motivated as ever. Although I tire of giving the elevator pitch for Spot.Us (which I can say without thinking now) I try to put things in context. This project is attempting something very new, completely different and to some utterly mind-blowing. Even if we never "stand tall" it is an honor to be working on something that others take notice of if only to think to themselves "I do/don't think that will work." The fact is - nobody knows (me included) and so there is a sense of gawking at every decision we make. I gawk myself!

I am not 100% sure what the future holds for Spot.Us. If some of the changes we are going to make above will take hold. How we will manage the peer review process or if Spot.Us will only work with news organizations that de facto provide editorial support. There are just too many variables to predict an outcome.

But that is what makes this fun. Every day is different. Some days are spent hours on the phone, hours in meetings, hours answering emails, or hours trying to figure out where this community is trying to steer itself so Kara and I can help pave a road in that direction.

And so I leave us all with one word that means ever-so-much to me.

Onward....

(p.s. who is coming with me?)

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 - fail early and often.

Recently Spot.Us and the Oakland Tribune have come together to partner and the collaboration can be an example on how both sides can address their weaknesses.

The Project: Oakland's streets face dire future without change.

My hat goes off to Martin Reynolds at the Oakland Tribune. From the first time I explained Spot.Us he has had a "yes" attitude.

I have to admit at first I wasn't ecstatic about the subject. But having time to reflect, it is the perfect pitch. This is the quintessential local story. In some ways it is almost cliche - but in the case of Oakland, the streets really are in poor condition. It is also a story that can be repeated in San Jose, Palo Alto, and beyond (yes, I'm calling out future news organizations to repeat).

"This is a problem we all have as a community" Reynolds said to me in conversation. And that is when I realized why this project made perfect sense. The Tribune is an Oakland organization that is the best suited to tackle this issue, to find out what challenges the city faces, hold people accountable, and perhaps even enact change.This is an act of more than just journalism - but community.

The reporter they chose is somebody that freelances with them regularly. Fine by me - in fact, preferred.

Community Journalism: Check!!!

A big part of this story will be a map-mashup. The map alone won't tell the story - but for obvious reasons it makes the whole story that much stronger.

One reporter cannot find all the potholes in Oakland. Sean Maher might know of some trouble spots - but this is a job for distributed reporting.

Spot.Us is going to organize "The Great Biking Pothole Search." (details to come on our blog)

Still in the early stages of planning, the idea is to get as many bike-lovers as possible to meet on a beautiful Saturday afternoon and bike in different directions for 40 minutes (20 one way and 20 back) making notes of all the major potholes they see. These will then be recorded on the map.

Community members doing acts of journalism.

Alone the map doesn't tell the whole story. And while some community members will donate 40 minutes of a Saturday afternoon - others will donate $10. That money will be used to pay a freelance journalism chosen by the Tribune - because we still need a reporter. And this is where new forms of media can learn to mature. It helps to have a reporter, in this case Tribune freelancer Maher, at the head of the project. He is accountable to ask questions to the right folks, find out what the challenges are, stick to the story, etc.

The idea: Some parts of journalism are best done distributed. Others are not.

Which is to say Content is King and Collaboration is Queen

Think in terms of Chess: The King is the most important piece, but the Queen is the most powerful.

Content is King: You want to make sure you produce quality reporting and a crafted narrative. This is best done by one person at the head.

Collaboration is Queen: If you don't involve the larger community you will never be able to map the potholes in your community and in the case of Spot.Us you'll never be able to afford the reporter who takes care of the content.

Life is a big game of chess - and the analogies abound.

Some updates on Spot.Us in List-y Form.

Trying to Evangelize

How to Build Your Own Community Funded Reporting Project.

Publishing stories

• Muni in Spite of Budget Gloom
• Stacey's Closing (A one-day story that I'm glad Spot.Us tried - but probably won't try again. All went smooth, but I don't know if we are really adding value. a Spot.Us blog post should go more in depth here).
• Return of the Hooverville: A very touching story that has now been retold by the New York Times - about six weeks after Spot.Us, KALW and Roxbury News collaborated to report on the issue.
  

Almost ready to publish!!!

• Oakland PD investigation: This story was funded six days before the Oscar Grant shooting. Since then the Chief has stepped down, four officers have been shot and the story continues to evolve. I do think that Alex Gronke at the Oakbook is wrapping it up and I am very excited.
• Oscar Grant short documentary: The case has now been put on hold. The reporter has captured an interesting moment in Oakland's history.
• A Tale of Two Census Tracts: I read the draft yesterday and was incredibly moved. If you live in San Francisco then you know the Tenderloin is falling apart. The reporter has gone through census data and really paints a picture of stark contrast between SF's rich and poor neighborhoods. But the story is also told with a beautiful narrative. This will be published in Race Poverty and the Environment, but we also hope to distribute it wider through Street Sheet, Street Spirit and perhaps the SF Guardian.
• Oakland Schools Phasing Out. The reporter got an educational reporting fellowship with New American Media based on the work she was doing for Spot.Us. As a result - she is able to go further into the story. We were thrilled!
• Newspapers in the face of changing times: Still in the works. A draft is being tossed around. In truth I was very hesitant to tackle this piece and almost took it down, but people started donating to it before I could. 
• Is the Bullet Train Still on Track? In collaboration with the Bay Area Monitor.
  

Stories we hope to fund soon.

• A look at Alameda's city budget (only $35 shy).
• Vindication of a Public Scholar (only $125 shy.
• Oakland's Streets (see above) (only $130 shy).
  

Working with News Organizations

We've now worked or partnered with the following in some form or other.

• Oakland Tribune (big w00t)
• Berkeley Daily Planet
• SF Appeal
• RawStory.com
• Kalw
• Public-Press
• Roxbury News
• NewsDesk.org
• VidSF.com
• Bay Area Monitor

And hopefully more collaboration in the making.

We've refunded two stories!!!

I am INCREDIBLY excited about this. The biggest appeal Spot.Us has to donors is the notion that they have the chance of getting their money back so they can reinvest it towards a second article. I am happy to say we've done this twice now.

Boulavards.com, On Earth Magazine

Thinking Outside the Box

In-person fundraising events are in the works. Think of these as "rent parties."

I am still a big believer in online organizing - but since we are working in communities, doing community journalism, we intend to put our faces out there as much as our Tweets. You need both.

New Features

If you haven't visited Spot.us in awhile - you should check out our new features.

The site remains incomplete. Potential ideas we have.

• "Join the reporting team" could turn into 'pick up assignments' ala IAmNews.com
• More social networking features: Tweet this, Facebook it, etc.
  
• The ability to show support for a story without donating money ala Digg.
• Easier registration/login process.
• Refine the new "group" functionality - which has been successfully tested
• Widget that allows donations on any blog via Flash-widget cool-y-ness (far off)
• A beat pitch: I'll cover city hall for X weeks if we can raise y dollars by date Z. If we reach the goal - I'll keep going.

Personal thoughts

I continue to have nothing but passion. This last weekend I spoke to the Alaskan Press Club. It was an honor to be invited out. At the beginning of my talk I said: "I will not lie to you" ... but at the end of that same sentence I said "I am optimistic for the future."

And I remain so. Spot.Us is making progress. We are far from being a fully fledged news organization, but that isn't our goal. We are learning all the time and with each passing week getting closer and closer.

I'm also happy to say that we have funded almost (emphasis on almost) one story a week.

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 we can implement. This gives us the flexibility to respond to user requests and perhaps even save money NOT implementing features that would have gone un-used.

So far it has worked rather well and I have been happy with Spot.Us' progress.

"Our Progress"

We have now funded 13 stories. Only two pitches have failed to reach their funding goal. We have four more in the system of which I'm confident three will be funded. For those keeping tract, that's an 84% success rate (16/19).

In terms of getting a proof of concept, I think we are there (or at least close). And I'm ready to try and take it to the next step.

Side note: Yes, there has been some criticism as to the quality of the finished content, but I take that as constructive. Challenge accepted! And while I have several responses, I won't force them into this post aside from this link and to say: don't lose site of the forest for the trees and that seven of the thirteen funded articles haven't been published yet so it's a bit early to judge.]

So how can we kick it up a notch? Both in terms of quantity and quality?

Some Ideas To Implement.

1. A blog for every pitch: This was the most painful cut from the last big round of development. I believe every pitch should have a blog attached to it, so the journalists can do their reporting in public and start "beat blogging." Journalism is a process - not just a product that people donate to - and I want that process to be made public via blogs. By engaging people in their blogs the experience of donating to a story will be better and I suspect the community can help the journalism process as well.

In the future this could even be a group blog with the reporter taking the lead and citizens contributing not just money, but tips and time (version 3.0).

2. Looking to be copycated: After this next round of development the source code will be in a much better state and I'll do a blog post on how anyone can take it, launch their own "community funded reporting project" for very little cost and I hope some take me up on the challenge.

3. Expand beyond the Bay Area: Most people fall into one of two camps on this: (a. Don't do it until you feel good about the Bay Area and (b. Do it now because the Bay Area limitation is killing you. Since I receive about one pitch local to areas outside the Bay Area a week that I take down, I lean towards the second camp. I will, however, stay focused on local reporting; no national/international pitches yet. I have drunk the Knight Foundation koolaid about local journalism.

4. Editors will be all volunteer: So far we've been trying to give 10% of the money raised to editors. The problem is that this attracts editors motivated by money. And unfortunately 10% of what we raise is never that much. Hence - the editors aren't that motivated. The best editing on our site so far has come from volunteer editors. These editors still get recognition for their work and so it benefits their personal journalism brand - albeit not monetarily. The 10% will go back to the journalists unless they want to make a generous contribution to Spot.Us to help cover our credit-card fees ;)

5. Social networking features: The implementation of funding groups (see Kiva's funding groups), more integration with share-features like "Share This." Integration with alternative payment systems like "Tip Joy" and PayPal.

6. User-interface improvements: To make the site easier to navigate, appealing to the eye, and more dynamic (an updated front page that allows people to browse pitches via JavaScript-flashiness, an updated front page video that can be changed easily, etc.)

7. Site specific features: A "reporters toolbar" and "news organization toolbar" that allow these actors to take simple actions to create, fund or show interest in pitches. This is also tied to the "reporters notebook" or blog and are difficult to explain in detail.

8. Plenty of other things: floating around my head.

We might not be able to get to all of these - but hey, a guy can dream. What would you add to this list? You can let us know here.

And hence the title of this post: I may have to make some more tough decisions between all the above, bug fixing and feature requests from users.

The good: Limitations force one to think critically and make calculated decisions.
The Bad: I will constantly wish we had more time/money to develop out the platform and will question whether I made the right decisions that benefit the community's ability to interact and engage.

Spot.Us continues to be an exciting adventure. There are still lots of barriers in our path but I remain eager to see how far we can take this. And that "we" is very literal. I don't think I'm in this by myself. The community on Spot.Us is growing and very much want them to feel in control of our future. Because.... they are.

As I often say now: I am in a position to explore and see how far the rabbit hole goes for "community funded reporting." Part of my responsibility then is to report back, as best I can, what I am learning and how others might attempt the same. I hope the platform we are building can be used and the lessons we learn along the way will be informative.

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 Police department.

With a specific call to action the Spot.Us platform performed beautifully.

• An independent journalist uploaded a pitch: a description of the work he wanted to do.
  
• Internet leaders passionate about the story spread the word and donated.
  
• The Spot.Us team did some pre-reporting to show that indeed - this is an important topic that can benefit from deep story-telling
  
• An independent news organization put up 50% of the cost for the story and will in exchange publish the content first and we will link to them. So the finished content gets seen by more people and the initial donors are validated in their early support.

Those four steps allowed us to fund the Oscar Grant short documentary in 11 days.

This week we also started reporting on

• The affordability of solar power for Bay Area homeowners.
  
• The impact of the recession on small SF business owners.

But - as noted in the title, we've had some failures as well. I don't take these as a bad sign - in fact, if we didn't stumble along the way we wouldn't learn. And indeed we are learning with every single pitch on Spot.Us.

This week we took down two pitches because they simply didn't get enough donations. A third came down because of a reporter's health.

The two pitches that were taken down were going to examine:

• How prepared the city of Oakland is for an earthquake.
  
• Where Bay Area neighborhoods get their electricity.

Both were great story ideas, but for some reason didn't connect with potential donors/readers. We simply couldn't get the traction for them. One thought is that they were both too broad. I suppose that is the classic problem in preparing for an earthquake. It will affect everybody - but nobody thinks it'll happen to them.

We are learning more and more how to present pitches to garner public support.

We've also started making some decisions that originally I wanted to avoid. I often refer to spot.us as a platform not a news organization - and while I stay committed to that notion - in the future we are going to make more editorial decisions about what pitches we will and won't take on. We are going to hold reporters responsible for certain actions and we will strongly suggest pricing for their work. We've begun to do this in public with the Spot.Us Reporter Agreement and pricing.

Spot.Us has also recently hired a community organizer Kara Andrade who is helping take our mission offline - to the neighborhood associations, to the PTA, nonprofits, etc. I think this is a part of Spot.Us that will be absolutely crucial for our development.

And out development continues. The web application continues to improve. I'm hoping that by the end of March or early April the code will be in good enough shape that others could take it and start their own "community funded reporting" site. That will be its own post.

There are more stories to tell, from the divide of wealth and poverty in SF to the phasing out of Oakland schools. Spot.Us has now funded 11 stories. We have five more in our system that we hope to fund.

Come join the revolution - it takes mere seconds and as little as $5 to make a difference. For now.... ONWARD!!!

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 our progress).

So - here is my progress report. The only parts left out are the financial records.

1. Please list each anticipated outcome and explain your progress in achieving it.

• Spot.Us would begin branding itself as a pioneer in "community funded reporting." - I am VERY happy with our progress here.
• We would launch an open source platform upon which local Bay Area journalists could pitch the public to fund their work as independent reporters. - the site is not "finished" by any means - but it gets the job done. I am satisfied with our progress here so far - and have plans for how the platform can improve in the future.
• The platform would be used to fund 3-6 investigations before the end of the year. - We have funded eight stories - with two more only $200 away from also being funded. Of these ten funded stories only one is below-par in terms of the type of reporting I want to fund. I believe I know why this reporting was able to sneak through and have plans to stop this from happening again

2. Is the fundamental need for your project still as you described in your proposal?

Yes. I would argue that it is becoming a bigger need as we see cities like Detroit cut back their daily print. I expect to see more cities cut back in the future. While online caters very well to breaking news (it is immediate, helps increase page-views, etc), it is difficult for news organizations to do long-form journalism and for independent journalists to get work doing larger investigations.

3. Were there any major changes in the project activities and timetable? What caused them?

So far I am happy with the progress we have made. It is always difficult to estimate when things will be ready for public consumption. I had aimed for a mid-October launch and ended up going public early November. So while the site's launch was about three weeks later than I would have preferred, I consider anything within a month of the anticipated date to still be "on time" in terms of launching a website.

Due to well-orchestrated marketing and exposure on the web we've managed to get enough traffic and interest to fund a few stories. Most of these will be published in January of 09' around the same time this report is due.

4. Describe any setbacks you encountered and how you addressed them.

Starting in January of 09' is when I expect Spot.Us to have serious challenges these will be.

• Technical - the site will need to react to user-feedback and expand to new regions.
• Marketing - with the initial buzz of our launch behind us - we will have to market ourselves very effectively in a grassroots fashion. We have to make the argument that journalism is a social good worthy of people's small donations. That is an easy argument to make to journalists - difficult to make to regular netizens.

The only setback on my mind right now is that every newspaper in the Bay isn't using Spot.Us to fundraise for themselves (this is after all a platform anyone can use - it is NOT a news organization to be viewed as competition). I have presented to many of them - so they are aware of Spot.Us, but they are not experimenting with it at this juncture. In many ways this is not un-expected. I would have been pleasantly surprised if the SF Chron had a freelancer create a pitch on Spot.Us and embraced the platform with open arms. Still - the impatient youth in me wants to kick down their doors and show them just how simple it is to do "community funded reporting."

I do think the Oakland Tribune is seriously considering having a freelancer put a pitch on Spot.Us. If that does happen - it will be a great opportunity to show the other papers in the Bay Area Newsgroup (a total of 11 papers) how beneficial "community funded reporting" can be.

5. Were there any surprises on the positive side? How did you react to those?

Little surprises every day.

The most apparent - there is a serious desire for Spot.Us to expand. Just about every week I get a different journalist emailing me wondering when Spot.Us will spread to another region.

6. What other things must occur to achieve a broader impact on the students, journalists or other population you want to reach?

• I need to build out the platform more. The current site is about 1/4th of what we've envisioned/designed. Considering our budget and time limitations - I'm happy with our progress, but we need to build out at least another 1/4th before I'd feel comfortable expanding to another region. I intend to try and tackle this first quarter of 09' so that we can expand to another city (Los Angeles?) by March/April. This planning hasn't been set in stone - but it is something I'm striving for.
• Once the platform is built out more - I will try and find another young journalist to adopt and use the platform outside of Spot.Us' organization - ie: They could start their own version using our code. Hey - it's open source. I would welcome the friendly competition. That will be a blog post called "Steal This Idea and Start Your Own Business."

7. How are you measuring your progress? Are those measurements working? Please attach copies of any evaluation reports.

I'm trying to measure progress in very concrete terms. As much as possible I ignore daily traffic and prefer to look at how much in donations we get per-day and how many stories we have funded.

Through our beta period up to today (December 20th 2008) we have raised roughly:

$8,600

We started collecting money in early July - so it has been less than six months and Spot.Us is collecting, on average, $1,450 a month. In truth - our donations have increased since launching the site - so this "average" is a bit misleading. Last month for example (the month of our Launch) we raised over 5k.

Note: If we raised another 5k we will be able to fully fund the remaining nine pitches that are already partially funded as of today December 20, 2008 - bringing our total of stories funded to 19.

The real question of progress will be: When we launch in another city if the donations continue to increase - or if "community funded reporting" requires a community organizer - somebody at the helm, to spread word about each pitch. If that is the case - the overhead of Spot.Us will dramatically increase (we will need to hire a community organizer in every city). Even if we find that success increases with a community organizer - it is possible to expand Spot.Us to a city without one - but it requires more on the part of the journalist who will have to be their own marketer. This is a larger issue within journalism that I think is trending in this direction. More and more we hear that journalists need to create and manage their online brands.

......We will find out.

**8. What is the average number of unique monthly visitors to your web site and any project-related web site? **

I only recently got Google Analytics working (long story, don't ask). I only have one month's data to look at - but I received 11,000 unique visits. I can only assume that this is "average." 11,000 unique turned into roughly $5,000. I never sold advertising - but I imagine this is a high return on investment so far. It might also be because of the initial launch.

9. If you were publicizing the single most important outcome of your work, what headline would you write for your news release?

Excellent question!!!

"Marketplace for citizens, freelance journalists and news organizations created"

Hopefully in January I could have a headline like.

"Oakland Citizens Fund Reporter to Hold Police Department To Task."
Pitch: http://spot.us/pitches/35

And every month thereafter I could have a big headline on how some community came together to to fund a reporter to do some meaningful piece of journalism that would benefit the greater community.

10. What did you do to market the project? Was it successful? What would you do differently next time?

Stage Two consulting helped me market the project pro-bono (because they are so rad and Jeremy Toeman is a longtime friend and advisor). I think our marketing has been successful in terms of spreading the word about Spot.us and the concept of "community funded reporting" throughout the general blogosphere/internet. I have been working very hard to make Spot.Us as open as possible and respond to as many questions, emails, phone calls as I can.

Where we have to improve is in our marketing to specific groups ie: news organizations, freelance reporters, civic organizations. Starting in the new year we will be focusing on reaching out to civic organizations and nonprofits. Again: The hard part is making the argument to them that "journalism" is something that will benefit their communities. It is a surprisingly difficult argument to make.

11. Please provide a census of program participants. What percentage were women and people of color? How does this participation measure up to your diversity goals and plans?

While we are an equal opportunity employer we have not set any specific diversity goals. At the moment David Cohn is the only full time staff member. I am a scrawny white Jewish boy.

Contractors to build the site have included: five males and two females.

Starting in January I will be hiring two part-time community organizers. Both are minorities (one is female Latina and the other Indian).

Reporters for Spot.Us span the gambit from White men to Asian women. Spot.Us does not exclude anyone from creating a pitch. At the same time - we can't "hire" anyone to create a pitch - so this is really up to word of mouth. Overall I am comfortable with the diversity of people that seem engaged with Spot.Us. We have a large international audience - despite the fact that they can't donate via PayPal (we can only accept U.S. Credit cards at the moment).

Questions 12-16 were about my spending habits for Spot.Us - these required spreadsheets and don't really translate well for this blog. But hey, at least you know I'm being held accountable for how the money is spent. I'll add this: David Cohn is the least well paid person on this project. I'm not doing this for money.

17. Did you collaborate with other organizations, particularly Knight Foundation grantees, during the course of this project? How?

No, but I have every intention of doing so next year. I would love to work with the Mercury News (technically no longer a Knight organization) and have spoken with Chris O'Brien about this - but I also know it is a hard time to approach a large organization like that with anything new, especially during these times.

The Maynard Institute is also based here in the Bay Area and I would love to work with them on a project. I'm sure the two of us together could fundraise for a very meaningful investigation here in the Bay.

If I am able to expand to other regions - then the number of potential collaborations will increase ie: in Chicago I could work with Chi-Town, MinnPost in Minnesota, Voice of San Diego in SoCal, Gotham Gazzette in NY - etc.

I do find that nonprofit news organizations are much more open to using Spot.Us than for-profit. Perhaps because the latter automatically look at online startups as competition despite my constant explanation that Spot.Us is a platform (a tool anyone can use... like YouTube) not a news organization to compete with.

**18. Please describe your interaction with Knight Foundation staff. What was most useful and what changes would you suggest? **

You guys kick ass. Don't change a thing. Just keep the ass-kickery alive.

**19. Was Knight Foundation able to facilitate contacts with experts in the field, professional peers and similar organizations? **

The gatherings that Knight has organized have been very stimulating. At the very least it is nice to meet other people who are trying risky, new ventures.

Also the name "Knight Foundation" commands a lot of respect. I sensed several times that I was being shown the door until I mentioned Knight Foundation and all the sudden people want to listen.

The shame is: How many other people are being shown the door and can't say "Knight Foundation" despite the good ideas they may have been evangelizing.

20. What else would you like Knight Foundation trustees and staff to know about your experiences with this project?

What an experience it has been! The world looks differently when you are in the eye of a storm.

I earnestly am happy with my progress so far. While I am an impatient youth, I also believe strongly in taking small executable steps and iterating. I originally thought that funding four stories before the end of the year would be an accomplishment. Now it looks like we are on the brink of funding ten.

But - as you all know, this is NOT a silver bullet and there are still LOTS of obstacles in the way.

When people ask me if this is the "future of journalism" - I tend to respond cautious optimism.

Which is to say: I have nothing convincing me that it ISN'T part of journalism's future. I have only been encouraged to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. I still have a flashlight on - and I'll try and let everyone know what I see.

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 during our beta-wiki phase).

And the general theory for Spot.Us has show it has some legs. The Hooverville pitch is going to be republished by KALW and Roxbury News who both contributed to the story and the Longevity Revolution pitch wouldn't have been successful if it weren't for the community organizing of Raines Cohen, Redwood Age and others in the aging/elderly community.

But what Spot.Us (and journalism in general) needs right now isn't just a chummy knock of the chin, we need a movement.

We need a shift in how people traditionally interact with journalism content. I'm looking for journalists to create pitches but just as important are civic leaders. People who don't just donate money - but time. People that can organize communities. Without them Spot.Us won't last the Winter.

(Image inspiration)

Behind every story is a cause, a movement, an opportunity for community organizing just waiting to break out. But we need to find those community organizers (enter Palin joke here) and convince them that good journalism is a goal to strive for.

Take the simple pitch about MUNI's Express service in San Francisco. We've raised $70 and only need another $180 to fully fund this story. That is just 18 people giving $10 each.

A quick scan and you'll find 300 people that have joined different Facebook groups based on MUNI. Meanwhile San Francisco has various groups and blogs dedicated to transit from RescueMuni.org, N Judah Chronciles, MUNI Diaries and more. It is in ALL these individuals and blogs interests to get good reporting on why MUNI doesn't run more express buses. Whether or not they knew it - the individuals who created these blogs and Facebook groups are in the position to be community leaders and make a difference.

Furthermore, between all these blogs and groups there is enough interest and people to fund this story in a single day without anybody giving more than $10. The problem isn't finding people. The difficult part is convincing them that good journalism about a topic, even a topic they care about, is worth a small $10 tax-deductible donation.

And that is where I need the help of every journalist, civic-minded individual, leader, friend and foe. You don't have to give much - just $5 but what is more meaningful is finding five other people who also give. That is how networks grow and thrive.

Can Spot.Us we usher in this new relationship between communities and journalism? Can we show people that solid reporting is worth $5-$10?

I don't claim to know the answer - but that is why this is a fun job. I know this. Spot.Us won't be able to do it alone. We need your help. We need your support to spread the word, not just with a link and a passive, "there is a new startup." But with your genuine enthusiasm not only for Spot.Us - but EVERY journalism startup that might help the craft continue despite the economic realities staring us in the face.

Lets work as if we were in the early days of a better time for journalism..... because we are.

1. Growing a Community and the Importance of Being Iterative
   
2. Eliminating the Fear of Being Open and the Importance of Being Iterative
   
3. 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 to turn Spot.Us into a dynamic site.

About two months ago we left the design phase and entered what I will now call "the age of development." My development team Hashrocket also ascribes to an agile or iterative technique in relation to their programming, so it's been a great working relationship.

This required us to be in constant contact. I would set the agenda by breaking website features into small executable goals, determining what features were the most important and Hashrocket would deliver.

After a five week programming sprint (geeks can follow along here, here, here and here... what can I say, it was a well documented development phase) we have a 1.0 version of Spot.Us. It's been incredibly fulfilling for myself personally, as I've finally started fiddling with code (at least on a surface level), something I've been wanting to do since before I applied for the Knight News Challenge.

And now we've reached the current stage and crux of this post.  Spot.Us is not waiting for a "tada" moment, although that effect is only natural when you make a big leap from wiki to what can only be called a more dynamic website.

Being "iterative" or "agile" is language I've adopted from the programming world. Developers often say they are "agile" and use "scrums" to program. But just as open source princples can and should be applied to journalism, so should their approach be adopted towards creating community and launching a living breathing website.

Spot.Us did a short "beta" period with the goal of getting some content in so that when we launch the public site, people will have pitches to fund and tips to join.

I'm hoping this small batch will grow as more people engage with the site.

Meanwhile "the age of development" will continue. The site isn't finished by any means. I'm sure we will find a few bugs, some user interface issues and I have a ton of feature ideas I'd love to implement. I just hope we can get to them all.

These first few weeks of Spot.Us will be getting our footing and positioning to see just how people interact with the site at a small executable scale. Starting now I am ringing bells and whistles about Spot.Us. We will continue to improve the site - but we want to do so with direct feedback from users. Tell us what tools you want to better support journalism! I consider myself now having a foot in development and a foot in community organizing.

It's been about a year since I first submitted the idea for Spot.Us to the Knight News Challenge and almost half a year since it was announced that I won. I feel confident in the progress we've made to set a solid foundation to test this idea. The next six months will be.... interesting.

Final note: The code for Spot.Us is already public. People ask me when Spot.Us will come to their city. My answer: "When you make it happen!!!" Start with a wiki and if you can show that it works, we can swoop in with the open source engine of Spot.Us and scale up. I'm not doing this for money, only glory - so you using the Spot.Us crowdfunding engine is fine by me!!!!!