This post has already made its round on Twitter – but I wanted to archive it on my blog as well.

The Sacramento Bee is asking various thinkers and writers to opine on the last decade for certain fields and industries and asked me to sum up the trend of new media in the last decade with a particular focus on California’s role. I had roughly 800 words to do so. That’s no small task. In truth I could probably write about this topic for days on end. Perhaps that is the larger purpose of this entire blog?

But for what it’s worth – here’s what I wrote for the Sacramento Bee.

Fear not for information – it always finds a highway

It’s easy to get lost in the buzz about the future of new media and the death of newspapers. Taking a closer look at the last decade might put the hype in perspective.

Just think, around this time 10 years ago, most people connected online through painfully slow dial-up modems. Cell phones were the size of Fuji apples with no Web browsing capabilities. Being “social” online meant forwarding a chain e-mail.

It’s amazing what can happen in the span of a decade. After a boom and bust, the Internet, led by Silicon Valley and Google’s public offering in 2004, has rallied back. It has since altered the way many people find mates, organize events, purchase products and do damn near anything you can think, including how they consume news and information.

This isn’t just idle chitchat. The revolution is happening and it will be “tweeted.”

Consider that Twitter is expected to hit the 10 billion tweet mark sometime in March. That gives you a sense of just how much information is being poured online.

So what does this trend toward?

Overall, the “new” in new media is replacing the old. And while there is an ongoing debate in journalism about the merits of this trend, from my vantage point as an online entrepreneur with my own nonprofit news organization, Spot.Us, the larger trend is toward the positive.

In any other decade of modern journalism, I’d be just graduating from a cub reporter beat covering the police. Maybe I would be moving on to metro or a specialized beat like education. But as luck would have it – and I do consider it luck – my journalism career has blossomed in a decade of uncertainty. As a result of traditional models unraveling, I’ve had the opportunity to define my own career and explore a new model of my crafting.

My organization, Spot.Us, is trying to pioneer “community funded reporting” which is the act of distributing the cost of hiring a reporter across many different people. In other words – if we can get 50 people to put down $10-$20 each – we’ve raised enough money to investigate a topic that all 50 people think is important. We give the public a freelance budget and respond to their editorial needs and requests.

This is one of many new projects here in California that are rethinking and reinvigorating media, tossing the old paradigms on their heads.

Others include New American Media, which is updating what we think about ethnic and youth media with projects like LA Beez and Youth Outlook Magazine. For watchdog journalism, the recently launched California Watch is riding the wave of nonprofit accountability journalism. It soon will be joined by the Bay Area News Project funded by private equity investor Warren Hellman.

On the other end of the spectrum are pure-play online start-ups in California that cover everything from the hyperlocal like SF Appeal or LA Observed to niche topics like PaidContent.org and TechCrunch, which are now industry leaders covering technology.

It is fitting that so much of the Internet revolution this past decade has taken place in California.

Just as we came to be the final stop of the Wild West, so too has our ambitious and innovative outlook on the world put the Golden State in the center of the digital revolution. Gold launched a thousand wagons in the 19th century, and now our Silicon Valley has launched a thousand start-ups.

Who knows which may hit as the digital equivalent of the New York Times? Before that happens, however, most agree there will be missteps along the way – plenty of them.

I always admit my project Spot.Us might fail. If we can report back to the larger journalism industry about what we learn along the way, then our collapse will not be in vain. Like a lone gold digger putting up a skull and crossbones sign in a mountain unsuccessfully mined, new media start-ups are constantly sharing what we learn to better help our allies in the cause to save the fourth estate.

The past decade has brought turmoil to how communities stay informed. Many would argue that people have more media sources than ever. But I’d be remiss not to point out the new digital means of getting news is replacing the old, to the detriment of some older readers. There also is more mistrust of mainstream news organizations than ever. This leaves our democracy troubled.

There’s no telling what the next decade will bring. But most media entrepreneurs, especially those in sunny California, believe there is a light at the end of this storm. We don’t know just what it will look like, and anyone who tells you they do know is lying through his teeth.

But I believe, as do many others, that journalism will continue beyond the existence of its instituions.

Written for Beth Kanter’s blog.

Almost ten months ago I launched Spot.Us via a Knight Foundation grant which is trying to pioneer “community funded reporting,” the act of distributing the cost of hiring an investigative journalist. In short: I fundraise for independent reporters but not through foundations or grant writing. Spot.Us fundraises by making the argument to the public that this reporting will benefit us all. If we can get 30-50 people to donate $20 each around a specific topic – we are in business.

It’s often called “crowdfunding.”I grabbed the term (and the concept for Spot.Us) while I was the research assistant for Jeff Howe who coined the phrase “crowdsourcing.” While working on the chapter about crowdfunding I began studying Kiva.org, Donors Choose, Sell A Band and other organizations exploring this space. In many ways Spot.Us is my interpretation of the practices and principles they were employing for journalism.

So what are those practices and principles? What are the concrete lessons, mistakes, ideas I can pass along to others who might want to join this space? In truth there are countless lessons every day. But here are a few that stick very prominently in my mind.

• Specificity and Transparency

Make sure all your ducks are in a row before you launch. It’s a natural inclination to launch the fundraiser the second you have the idea. We’ve done this on Spot.Us too many times. We always find that when we take the time to get our messaging, goals, and deliverables in a row first, we do much better.

A good example of this is the City Budget Watchdog series on Spot.Us which has raised $3,785. That series was originally called “City Budget Blues” and if you watch our quick video pitch you’ll see remnants of that title. It was only a week or two in that we realized our messaging was way off. “City Budget Blues” was a bit of a downer and while very on point wasn’t tied to the goal of the project – to be a watchdog of city hall at a time when others weren’t acting as the watchdog.

Make sure you’ve accounted for.

1. A specific attainable goal
2. The justification for that goal and why people should donate
3. Messaging: Make sure all parties involved know the messaging.
4. A clearly defined deliverable

From the donor perspective transparency means something else. It means you know exactly where your money goes.

What’s the difference between donating on NPR and donating on Spot.Us.

The images below should make the case apparent. And NPR has even improved recently in letting a donation be more transparent and accountable.

NPR’s Ask

Sot.Us’ Ask

Now imagine if both of these donations were for NPR.

In one case NPR would let you donate to the organization or a specific NPR affiliate near you. In the second case NPR would let you donate to a specific story. You’d have a bunch to choose from and you could pick the one that meant the most to you. Fundraising is nothing new. People have been doing it for as long as…. well…. people. What the Internet has allowed is a transparency and specificity in the act of fundraising that turns a donation not just into a “good feeling” but a statement and value judgment about who we are as individuals. It can be fun. The best Spot.Us pitches are those that give the donor that sense of ownership.

• Deadlines and Concrete Goals.

Deadlines and restrictions are great. No joke! Whenever possible give yourself a deadline. It is amazing what we are capable of when put between a hard place and a deadline. Moreover deadlines give you and your collaborators in fundraising (the donors) something to rally against. It’s a battle against time. One feature set I know Spot.Us needs is a ticking clock that counts down the days left. Right now we don’t have that – but whenever we Tweet “x days left to reach y goal” we get a reaction. Knowing there is a time limit on something gets people moving. It also gives us a narrative. And that leads directly into……

• Have Something to Cheer About.

In one of our more successfully fundraising examples we caught the attention of a local blog that covered crime in Oakland. Excited about the work we were doing they asked if they could send out an email blast to their list of 500+ about the reporting efforts we were undertaking. It worked out well – raising a few hundred dollars and spreading through a few other email lists eventually propelling us to our goal within 12 days.

What initially caught their attention?

A single Tweet I had done about a single blog post from the reporter. The blog post was just an update about their reporting efforts. Some might have even thought it mundane. But it gave us something to cheer about “hey – look at this, the reporting process in action.” Giving updates along the way, big or small, gives people something concrete to examine.

Many people will not donate the first, second or third time they hear about a fundraising effort. According to Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films it takes on average seven asks before somebody will become a donor. Okay – so how can one ask seven times without sounding redundant or annoying? Don’t make a direct ask: Just tell the story of your progress. Be a cheerleader and that does the asking for you.

In many ways Spot.Us is always trying to tell two narratives. The story of our pitches (the reporting) and the story of our site and the pitches (their progress). What are some interesting aspects of telling a story? Getting new and interesting characters. That’s where partners and collaborations can be huge.

• Finding the Right Partners

It’s easy to want to partner with everyone. Hey, if you can just convince a few dozen people to join you right off the batt you’ll have some good momentum and coalition building can get lead you to think that everyone is a potential partner.

That isn’t the case and assuming right off the bat that your project will be valued by other organizations is a mistake that will jump back in your face. It certainly has for me when approaching disenfranchised communities. Even with the best of intentions other organizations, especially media organizations (even alternative ones), are viewed as with suspicion. Partnering doesn’t happen at the drop of a phone call.

What should you look for in partnerships? Here are the things we’ve found we need for all partnerships.

1. Trust – we want to work with folks that we can trust and who trust us.
2. The collaboration should be in the interest of all parties.
3. “Buy in” with decision makers. They need to be on board otherwise it will hit the fan later.
4. Key liaison – somebody from every party who is tasked to the project.
5. Commitment of time/resources and/or money from both parties. It does not need to be all three.
6. Money: Yes, it is the root of all evil, but a little money can grease the wheels. A commitment from each partner to try and fundraise x amount also works.
7. The story/project. We are looking for good stories – that has to be at the heart of it all.

When you do find the right partner it can go a long way. Especially if you are able to land a big partnership. One article in the NY Times can raise upwards of $6,000. One newspaper many checkbooks.

• Community is your core

Another central character in the narrative of your fundraising, what you can cheerlead about, is your growing community. These are your heroes. “I aint too proud to beg” was always a great quote (The Temptations). But that means you “aint too proud to thank” everyone and anyone. No donor is too small. You’d be amazed at what can happen when you give just a little attention to the smallest donor. The more personable and personal you are the more one-time donors become partners.

On occasion you might get a member of your community who will help cheerlead with you.

This one Tweet from Tim O’rielly brought in several hundred dollars within a matter of hours.

You don’t have to be the only cheerleader. Other people can join you – but they’ll only show as much enthusiasm and passion as you do. Somebody has to wrangle the project and lead by example.

Don’t confuse the medium and the message. Sure, it’s great that we can fundraise for independent journalists on a custom built site like Spot.Us. But we could also do it with a simple ChipIn widget.

• You can get started with JUST a wiki.

That’s right: Spot.Us started 10 months ago using JUST a wiki. It was free to setup. We used a third party site, The Point, to collect money. There are countless sites that will collect money on your behalf. Facebook Cause, Kickstarter, First Giving and more. Rather than build an entire system yourself use whatever is already out there. You might also check to see if there are any sites that work around your specific niche like Donors Choose for teachers. I’d check out Social Actions to get a sense of other players in the space.

Just yesterday I found another reporting project on The Point.

Note: The most important link is this Google Form where we are asking YOU for feedback/goals/etc. As always to stay more current on Spot.Us development check out our blog (recently redesigned). Digidave.org will have occasional updates but otherwise will remain my personal blog to rant and rave.

Spot.Us recently had its second community advisory board meeting at Tech Liminal. We experimented with making the meeting more open by invitingnew 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 agenda: mapping out where we wanted to be in three months from now until we reach September 15, 2009. We received a lot of amazing and useful points to consider and are eternally grateful to our Advisory Board. Keep reading to learn more about what we hope to accomplish and how you can help shape our future.

Below is a quick recap of what we’ve accomplished and  the goals for the next three months, without any particular priority. We want you to help us prioritize them.

Guess what – I’m not that smart. The best thing I’ve done in my career is talk to folks who are and learn from them.

Here is a list of interviews I’ve done either in person, over the phone or via email. These are compiled from my time with BeatBlogging.org, Digidave.org, and  NewsInnovation.com. I still haven’t combed over my work with NewAssignment.net – and might not since most of my work there was researched and written articles and less Q&A style interviews.

If I had more time I’d break these down into categories. But for now, try not to watch/read them all in one sitting

1. Bill Mitchel from Poynter
2. Mark Briggs – on his journalism startup.
3. Two reporters from Read Write Web
4. Josh Wolf – on video on the web.
5. Geoff from – Sacramento Press
6. The CoPress Kids: Greg Linch and Daniel Bachhuber
7. Adrian Holvaty – Scratch your itch
8. Adrian Holvaty – quick and fun interview
9. Jason Kristufek explaining News Innovation BarCamp
10. Dan Pacheco – Demonstrates PrintCasting
11. Chris O’brien – On CopyCamp
12. Peter Deitz – Explains Social Actions
13. Beth Kanter – The Cute Dog Theory
14. Tristan Harris – Apture
15. Scott Meyer – This Too Will Pass
16. Leonard Witt on Representative Journalism
17. Scott Karp – Publish2
18. Scott Karp Publish2 – take two!
19. Geneva Overholser – USC’s Dean of Journalism
20. Mark Glaser – MediaShift
21. Guy Kawasaki – on linking
22. M.G. Siegler (Paris Lemon) from VentureBeat/TechCrunch
23. Marc Cooper – OffTheBus.net
24. The Top Three Diggers (Mr Baby Man, MSaleem and Ziabatsu)
25. David Beers – from the Tyee
26. Andrew Hyde – Professional Startuper-er-er
27. Josh Marshal – on Community Funded Reporting
28. 15-year-old entrepreneur Daniel Brusilovsky
29. Kevin Hessel – Marin Independent Journal (made private upon request)
30. Chris Messina – on Open DiSo
31. Jonathan Dube and Martin Moore
32. Andrew Mason – ThePoint.com
33. Amit Gupta – Jelly SF
34. Ryan Sholin – on ReportingOn.com
35. Dan Gillmor – on being young and entrepreneurial
36. Ben Melancon – on Drupal
37. Amy Gahran – On being a fire starter
38. Tom Evslin – Looking at Journalism from Outside
39. Fabrice Florin – on NewsTrust’s Launch
40. Jason Calacanis – on Meta-journalism
41. Ryan Budke – from Propeller
42. Matt Neznanski – City Beat Blogging
43. Alan Mutter – The Next Six Months for Newspapers
44. Bill Densmore – Information Valet Project
45. Dave Chase – Experimenting on the Revenue Side
46. Michael Rosenblum (second time)
47. Ellen Miller – Sunlight Foundation
48. Ed Sussman – Fast Company
49. Chris Lydon – Open Source Radio
50. Dan Barkin News & Observer
51. Lila King – CNN’s iReport
52. Janice Brand – Helium
53. Rick Waghorn – MyFootballWriter
54. Mark Potts – Backfence
55. Jarah Euston – Fresno Famous
56. John Wilpers – BostonNOW
57. Jay Rosen — NewAssignment.Net
58. Debbie Galant – Baristanet
59. Simon Bucks – Sky News
60. Edward Roussel – The Telegraph
61. Howard Weaver – McClatchy
62. Paul Bass – New Haven Independent
63. Dan Pacheco – Bakersfield.com
64. Emily Gertz – WorldChanging
65. Paul Sullivan – Orato
    
66. Jane Hamsher – FireDogLake
67. Merrill Brown – NowPublic
68. Lisa Williams – H2OTown, Placeblogger
69. Jonathan Weber — NewWest.Net
70. Scott Clark and Dwight Silverman – Houston Chronicle
71. Chris Tolles – Topix
72. Mike Orren – Pegasus News
73. Steve Safran – Lost Remote
74. John Oppedahl
75. Rob Neppell – N.Z. Bear
76. Donica Mensing – Reynolds School of Journalism
77. Amanda Michael – OffTheBus.Net
78. Bill Allison – Sunlight Foundation
    
79. Robin Sloan, Andrew Fitzgerald – Current TV
80. Jason Oberfest – Los Angeles Times
81. Martin Huber – Myheimat.de
82. Howard Owens – GateHouse Media
83. Travis Henry – YourHub
84. Alan Levy – BlogTalkRadio
85. Brian Conley – Alive in Baghdad
86. Barry Parr – Coastsider
87. Adrian Monck – City University of London
    
88. Chuck Olsen – The Uptake
89. Dave Winer – Scripting News
90. David Stern – MixedInk
91. Robin Hamman – BBC
92. Patrick Phillips – The Vineyard Voice
93. Danny Glover – Air Congress
94. Mary Mathews – Pound Productions,LLC
95. Dorian Benkoil – Digital Media Consultant/Columnist/Teeming Media
96. Chrys Wu – CBS TV Digital Media Group
97. Henry Abbott – TrueHoop/ESPN
98. Michael Mcintee – The Uptake
99. Tristan Louis – TNL.Net
100. Chris Lydon – Open Source Radio
101. Charlie Beckett – Polis
102. James Kotecki – Video Blogger/Politico
103. Rick Burnes – Faneuil Media
104. Micah Sifry – Personal Democracy Forum
105. Jennifer Carroll – Gannett
106. Derek Willis – Database Journalism at Washingtonpost.com
107. Jeff Burkett – WashingtonPost.Newsweek Interactive blogs
108. Jim Colgan – WNYC Radio
109. Michael Rosenblum – Democratizing Video via Rosenblum Associates
110. Rachel Sterne – GroundReport
111. Kate Marymont and Mackenzie Warren – Fort Myers

I have not combed through my NewAssignment.net posts which spans two years.

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. 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 reporters 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 Ying 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 defacto 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 mean ever-so-much to me.

Onward….

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

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 – 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 … seriously, this is going to be exciting!!!)

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 (Update… FUNDED!!)
• Vindication of a Public Scholar (only $100 shy.
• Oakland’s Streets (see above) (only $120 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.

If you are an entrepreneur – I am handing this one to you on a silver plate.

Just about every week I get an inquiry from someone to start their own version of Spot.Us. From up North (Canada) to down South (Brazil) and all the way over to Australia. I’ve gotten requests on how Spot.Us can expand to new regions. So here it is….

The code for spot.us is 100% open source.
(Technically I haven’t slapped an OS license on it. But I will.. promise. And in the meantime, this is a poor man’s version of it: “you can use the code.”)

I wanted to wait until I had some more features to do this post. And now – those features are ready. Since we are also in the Chronicle today – I figure it is a good time to give away any secret sauce we might have.

What this means:

• We have absorbed 90-95% of the cost to start your own community funded reporting site.
• It can be nonprofit or for-profit. You could end up making LOTS of money if it works for you! …. just don’t forget to hire me
  
• I’ll help. If somebody is very serious about this – I will get on the phone or even meet in person to talk about how you can do this.
  

The steps and the general costs

1. Download the spot.us code: Which has lots of new features!!!. Cost = $0
2. Buy a URL: cost = $10
3. Get hosting: cost = a few hundo’s a month. Use Amazon EC2 to save some money.
4. Get a merchant account (also need a payment gateway): A few hundo’s on installation + about 3% off every credit card transaction. You can use PayPal to save on installation and if you are a nonprofit Google Checkout will save you the 3% credit card charge.
5. Get up and running: You’ll have to hire a Ruby on Rails person to install the code from step one and sync it up with the merchant account in step four. I worked with a firm called Hashrocket. They wrote the original code so they know it best and should be the most cost-effective. A good RoR developer can cost up to $140 an hour. But they won’t have to do any heavy lifting – so somebody who is adequate (maybe $70-$80 an hour will do). Total cost: anywhere from $0 if you call in a favor to $1,000 – still relatively cheap in context.
6. Change the text/images: You will probably want to change some of the text/images on the site. Replacing “spot.us” with whatever you call your organization. Change the text on the about page, etc. I would recommend looking over the terms of service, privacy policy etc. Make sure you are cool with all of it. I recommend hiring the developer from step five to set up your own computer to run an instance of the spot.us code – so you can tweak this text to your hearts content without having to pay somebody an hourly rate to administer your text changes. Images: You might need to hire a designer if you are particular and have that person look at the CSS of our site to make sure the new images conform, but that shouldn’t be too hard.

Want to discuss more? Ask questions in the Google Group we formed for people that want to launch their own Community Funded Reporting site based on the Spot.Us code.

Next steps

• Find some reporters.
• Or: Just put up pitches yourself – as we’ve started doing on Spot.Us. If you raise enough money – then I gauruntee, you’ll find reporters.
• Go forth and report.

Ideas

• Put up a pitch that is really a beat: “I will cover city hall in town X for Y months. If we can raise Z dollars by time this is done – I’ll continue coverage for another Y months.

Feel free to contact me: david at spot dot us.

Why would I give this away?

• I am young and naive.
• It will make me look good if others try it.
• I believe in it.
• I’m required to by the terms of my grant from
  Knight Foundation
  

So if you are serious – get in contact with me. I’ll give you a tutorial on the admin interface of the site and we can talk strategy.

This months Carnival of Journalism is hosted by Paul Bradshaw. He writes:

Well, lets get my obvious bias out of the way. As the founder of Spot.Us – I think the idea of “community funded reporting” has a lot of merit and I’ll go into more detail why in this post. I do want to preface it by saying: it is not the only model out there. This is not the “key” to journalism’s financial woes – but I have yet to be discouraged and convinced to turn around and give up.

The gift economy in America is $300 billion of which 75 percent ($225 billion) comes from individual donors. So while Spot.Us had a great first month raising almost $5,000 – I don’t believe we’ve even scratched the surface.

More importantly, Spot.Us is one representation of an idea — “community funded reporting” — which should be MUCH bigger than our small nonprofit. There are other examples of it already in ReelChanges.org and Representative Journalism* but there are COUNTLESS individual examples of ‘community funded reporting’ from Talking Points Memo and Ana Marie Cox all the way down to when a blogger on a specific topic puts up a paypal button.  (Soon I’ll release the code under an open source license and people can create their own community funded sites).

The realities: Advertising dollars are still needed – so I’m glad that the LA Times has reached a new level of sustainability. Spot.Us and “community funded reporting” cannot sustain an entire newsroom or an individual’s entire freelancing career. Nor will you ever hear me claim otherwise.

But community funded reporting can help fill in news holes – and as we close secondary papers and shrink newsrooms – there will be big news holes, especially when it comes to larger, expensive investigations that typically require more funding than they will produce in advertising.

I am finding out more and more every day that certain types of investigations the public will fund and others, they won’t. There must be a public good presented. In short: We can fund stories on education, police, poverty, but we won’t be able to crowdfund that profile of a celebrity. Lucky for publishers – that is the kind of content advertising can support.

What needs to happen for “community funded reporting” to take off?

First it is a question of marketing: The public has to know that this is a meaningful way to donate, just as they donate to goodwill, and journalists have to learn to sell their work as a public good.

Larger publishers must experience and say “this reporting needs your support.” They have the audience and the trust – and that is why I made sure that Spot.Us integrates very nicely with any news organizations should they want to participate. But in truth, they can do this without Spot.Us.

Larger bloggers should experiment. What Anna Marie Cox did is a great example of “community funded reporting.” I often use Robert Scoble as an example of where “community funded reporting” couldn’t go wrong. Scoble has a niche within tech and already has a sponsor, but imagine (just for sake of argument) it fell through, just as Radar Magazine fell through for Anna Marie.

Scoble could easily propose to do an investigation into something tech-specific like (again just for fun) Sun Microsystems (it would have to be within his tech niche) and could probably be funded overnight. If Scoble wanted to raise 5k – that whould just be 500 people giving $10 each. That is just 1 percent of his 50k followers on twitter. According to the 1% 9% 80% rule from Wikipedia (which is holding true on Spot.Us) it is very possible.

Now that might only last Scoble a month, but I bet he could do that 4-6 months of the year. The other 6-8 months he might have to find something else, but I never claimed Spot.Us was a career maker. But it certainly wouldn’t hurt.

I use Scoble as an example because it is easier to imagine with his magnitude of followers. But I believe anyone with 50k readers that is an expert on a specific niche could do the same. SFist? Oakland Tribune? Michael Pollan covering food? LaughingSquid could spread the word about something he is passionate about? If the pitch was right (obviously an important factor) I feel confident they could all fundraise an in-depth investigation of their choice. And those are just off the top of my head here in SF. Think nonprofit news for a moment (Voice of San Diego, MinnPost, ChiTown and… gasp, ProPublica, and you start to get a sense of what is possible).

But I digress…. “How to support
journalism online financially”

There is always the possibility that…. it isn’t.

Journalism has been financially sustainable in the past because it held a monopoly on the means of mass communication. There is no monopoly anymore. Perhaps as a result, it is no longer sustainable. End of story.

But guess what… Art (high art) has never been sustainable in the true sense of the word – but it has always been around and nobody is questioning its future (pop art, pop journalism etc is a separate issue). Spot.Us is built around the idea that journalism, like the arts, is no longer sustainable in the true sense of the word, through advertising – but can go nonprofit and serve the public and therefore merit public patronage.

I could be wrong, of course. Perhaps journalism is still sustainable via an updated advertising model on the web. And if I am – I would be happy. If I am wrong I believe it will be because of a mixture of tools that in combination keep a news operation alive. That combination being advertising, subscriptions and syndication. I suspect other members of the Carnival discussed this in more depth than myself.

Community funded reporting is one angle which I am bias towards and I had to get my peace out. The real answer: we don’t know. I think there will be lots of splintering and every news organization will have to figure this question out for themselves. There are no more cookie cutter business models.

*disclaimer ReelChanges.org is my fiscal sponsor as a nonprofit and I’m an advisor on RepJ).

The following was my final project to graduate with a Masters from Columbia’s journalism school. I reported and wrote this article almost two years ago. Its foundation can be found here. I have no good excuse for sitting on it this long.

The thesis:

1. The Dean campaign in 2004 didn’t elect a President, but it did become a breeding ground for new leadership in liberal politics.
2. The software behind this grassroots movement became politicized and powered the progressive left which has since come of age.
   

I am finally getting around to publishing it now for two reasons:

• To my knowledge it is the only close examination of the technology and techies behind the Dean campaign. I hope I did that period of history justice: The story below doesn’t show it – but I spoke/studied close to 40 Deaniacs: From (A)ldon Hynes to (Z)ack Exley
  
• That history is more relevant now that Obama, an obvious descendant of Dean’s online organizing techniques, has proven they can be used successfully.

And so I am publishing

Drupal Nation: Software to Power the Left

It was a cold and snowy January evening in Burlington Vermont when Zack
Rosen heard the words he’d been dreading and half-expecting from his
candidate Howard Dean, the onetime Democratic frontrunner for president,
turned laughing stock.

Rosen, a computer science major who had dropped out of college his sophomore year to volunteer for Dean was bundled in a snow jacket and pants, like most of the other campaigners who were milling around that afternoon. Rosen and Clay Johnson, a software engineer for the Dean campaign, were sitting together at Rosen’s cubical, which held three computer monitors. Nearby they had mounted a television
on a portable stand where the two stared bleakly at the live broadcast of Dean speaking from the Iowa caucus. Johnson began to wag his head in disbelief to Rosen. As Dean tried to reenergize his campaign, after finishing a disappointing third, he produced a ten second sound bite where he appeared to be yelling uncontrollably at the crowd. The “Dean Scream” was captured by television cameras and rebroadcast across America, turning Dean from a presidential hopeful to a Saturday Night Live Skit.

Everything Rosen, a 20-year-old computer programmer had worked for was unraveling before his eyes. “Things got pretty out of control pretty quickly. People circled off into their groups of friends and started talking about doing their own thing,” said Rosen.

Leading up to the Iowa defeat, Rosen had carefully orchestrated the development of the social networking
features that came to power Dean’s Internet success, mustering the magic of an obscure but robust content management system from Belgium, known as Drupal.

Thanks to Rosen, Drupal was powering hundreds of local Dean Web sites around the country. If you were an active Dean supporter, whether you knew it or not, you had encountered a Drupal site. And if you were a Dean organizer, by time the campaign was done, you were intimate with the software.

The night of the “Dean Scream” Rosen had to find his way home. He lived on the other side of town and
didn’t have a car. He relied on rides from other campaigners. The bench near the parking lot behind Dean’s Burlington headquarters, normally a place for strategic conversations, was filled with nervous campaign staffers chain smoking. “People tried their best to do their jobs, but everyone knew how bleak the situation was,” says Rosen, who stayed with the campaign another month only to return back to the University of Champaign Illinois where he dropped out a year earlier. Completely broke Rosen relied on his college friends for a few weeks while he regrouped. When the dust settled, Rosen decided not to go back to school. It had crossed his mind, but he longed to repeat the magic of the Dean campaign.
“All these ideas and methods that we were doing could have been used by many different groups of people, but we were kids, we didn’t know anything about anything,” says Rosen.

The Dean campaign didn’t elect a President, but it did become a breeding ground for new leadership in liberal politics. “The phenomena was a self-organizing thing that happened around
Dean, and the campaign was smart enough that they didn’t snuff it out, they started looking for ways to work with it,” says Micah Sifry, co-founder of Personal Democracy Forum, a hub for technologists and politicians to share ideas.

Read the rest of this entry »

(Image inspiration)

Because …. you are.

From a blog post I wrote yesterday at Spot.Us giving a general run down of where we are two weeks into the “official” launch.

On a P.S. Note: Want to give this Thanksgiving? Why not help support a recently laid off journalist who wants to continue doing what he loves to do.