David Cohn, founder of Spot.us joined us and gave an awesome interview. Spot.us is a site dedicated to “research & development” and delivery of community journalism in the San Fransisco Bay area. David says that Spot.us is actively going out to local meetings and listening to the citizens of San Fransisco and asking them what stories they want covered. In short, journalists will post a story they would like to cover based on local demand and set a price for their time & energy to write/cover the story. Then, the community can come in and donate any amount of money they would like to give in order to get the story covered.

“Journalism will survive the death of it’s institutions” Lisa Williams

Spot.Us is a nonprofit project of the Center for Media Change and funded by various groups like the Knight Foundation.

We are an open source project, to pioneer “community funded reporting.” Through Spot.Us the public can commission journalists to do investigations on important and perhaps overlooked stories. All donations are tax deductible and if a news organization buys exclusive rights to the content, your donation will be reimbursed. Otherwise, all content is made available to all through a Creative Commons license. It’s a marketplace where independent reporters, community members and news organizations can come together and collaborate

Spot.Us was founded by David Cohn and made possible by a generous grant from the Knight Foundation. Spot.Us has also drawn on support from individual funders like yourself, a fantastic team of advisors, designers (who used the frealy available FamFamFam icons) and developers of Hashrocket. We are proudly hosted by Engine Yard. We are an open source project and you can contribute on Git Hub

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