Citizens of the San Francisco Bay area can now hire journalists to investigate issues relevant to their community. Spot Us, a new nonprofit initiative, uses the principle of crowdfunding by allowing people to vote for and finance story ideas that they judge interesting. The articles are then posted on the website and given or sold to local newspapers that want to publish them.
In order to limit the influence of financial contributors who might be driven by personal interests, donations are limited to 20% of the cost of the story.
Spot Us was founded by Dave Cohn, a 26-year-old journalist, with the help of a $340,000 grant from the Knight Foundation. It might very well be the future of reporting!
The NYT: “A different way to pay for the news you want,” August 23, 2008
