Spot.us

Spot.Us was a US non-profit organization that used crowdsourcing and crowdfunding to bring citizens, journalists and media companies together in a virtual marketplace . It was founded by David Cohn, who received a grant of 340,000 US dollars from the Knight Foundation. The New York Times portrayed the new concept in the "Week in Review" series in August 2008. Spot.Us mainly dealt with projects in or near the headquarters in the San Francisco Bay Area . Spot.us was closed in February 2015.

concept

Reports arise either from a pitch or from a tip. A pitch is a journalist's offer to write on a topic for a certain amount of money. One tip is a citizen's request for an article on a topic. If a journalist wants to take up the topic, he will create a pitch for it. Visitors can then finance a pitch with donations. Smaller reports cost a few hundred dollars, the largest cost a few thousand dollars. The finished reports are available with a Creative Commons license. They can be read for free on the website and used by the media for free. Media can obtain copyright for an article for a limited time by donating more than 50% of the amount.

history

Spot.Us works with partners such as the New York Times , Annenberg School of Communications, Oakland Tribune , San Francisco Magazine , Earth Island Journal and The Public Press .

In April 2010 spotus.it, an independent organization with a similar concept, was founded in Italy. In May 2010 the Australian website youcommnews was launched, funded by the Public Interest Journalism Foundation. Spot.Us was taken over by American Public Media in November 2011 , paused in August 2013 after the departure of important APM employees and a negative development of the pitches and finally closed in February 2015.

literature

• Weichert, Stephan : Digital Mediapolis. The new public on the Internet. Cologne 2010. ISBN 978-3-86962-012-1

Web links

• Official website Spot.Us (offline)
• Interview with David Cohn in Focus , January 29, 2010: Journalists are like shipwrecked people in the sea
• Fluter , July 14, 2009: Collecting for a good story
• Interview with David Cohn on training.dw-world.de , May 17, 2009: Charity journalism

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Knight Pulse: Spot.Us ( Memento of the original from December 21, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ^ New York Times Week in Review, August 23, 2008: A Different Way to Pay for the News You Want
3. ↑ Spot.us: Who we work with , accessed 25 February 2010
4. ↑ spotus.it: Il progetto Spot.Us Italia , accessed on April 26, 2010
5. ↑ Some news from the Public Interest Journalism Foundation , accessed May 28, 2010
6. ↑ http://current.org/2011/11/apm-acquires-spot-us-will-merge-it-with-public-insight-network/
7. ↑ http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2015/03/why-crowdfunded-journalism-pioneer-spot-us-died/