A few weeks ago I was invited to speak at the Cronkite School of Journalism in Arizona by my friend and mentor Dan Gillmor. It was a gathering of journalism professors from around the country who are going to build their own curriculum to teach entrepreneurial journalism. Dan asked me and Mark Luckie to come speak about our experience going from J-school to startup. It’s a different career path from many and the point is to show professors that it’s a viable path.

Without a doubt it is a real path. I’ve been living it for so long (even before Spot.Us I had been working on “experimental projects”) it doesn’t even seem like a question to me. Sometimes I am looked at as a poster-boy for entrepreneurial journalism. And on those occasions I’m happy to evangelize what is a totally viable path.

But one of the professors at the Cronkite J-school gathering asked a very important and a totally fair question. I’m paraphrasing here: “I know it’s a real path, but it can’t be all butterfly’s and kittens. What are the tradeoffs? What are the hard parts of going down this route? I don’t want to send off students without a healthy dose of reality.”

Sometimes those of us who have drank the entrepreneurial Kool-Aid like to point out success stories and perks without mentioning just what you have to give up to go this route.

I wouldn’t change a thing about the career path I’ve chosen. It has absolutely worked out for me. But if I were to advise a younger me – I would be remiss in my egoistic duties if I didn’t convey both sides of the question “should you go out on a different kind of career path.” There are plenty of positive things I would say. I often shout out about how awesome it is to start your own project, blog, company, nonprofit, etc. But that’s not the purpose of THIS blog post. I’m playing the contrarian so that our Carnival isn’t one big “yes we can”-fest. With that in mind there are THREE big areas that somebody who is thinking of going out on this path should keep in mind.

1. There is a time burden

I used to joke “that the Internet doesn’t sleep and so neither can I.” I’ve gained some wisdom on how to balance certain aspects of work/life but if you have gone out on your own to start something up it is not a 9-5 job. It is not a Monday-Friday job. “What you gain in freedom, you lose in free time.”

2. There is a mental burden

The buck stops with you. There is no “boss” to complain about. If things have taken a turn for the worse, the only person you can blame is yourself. In fact, as other people start to rely on you for a paycheck it becomes an even bigger mental burden. You don’t want to let anybody down. You must learn to live with that mental pressure. What you gain in potential reward you lose in mental security.

3. There is a path burden

It is a career path. Once you start walking down that road, it is difficult to go back. When I made the choice to go down this path I was a hard working tech-reporter. I have followed some of my tech-reporting peers and admired their careers. In fact, my replacement at Wired is still there holding down a solid job. It is a path I could have gone. If I wanted I could still go back to being a reporter/writer – but after several years being out of that game, I’d have to do some backtracking. I’d have to work underneath that guy at Wired (ironically enough, I interviewed/hired him). I’d have to sharpen my skills again. It is difficult to go back. Moreover – you might not want to go back. There is a bit of the “take the blue pill or the red pill” aspect to striking it out on your own.

As you probably picked up – there is an upside to all of these downsides. As with most things in life it isn’t black/white. There are shades of grey and you have to be prepared to paint with those shades. It’s amazing what you can do with only a few colors.

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From the launch of Spot.Us, I’ve always said the following:

• Anyone can tackle the crowdfunded journalism model. In fact, NPR could do it tomorrow and blow me out of the water. It’s just about being transparent and giving up control over how donation money gets spent.
• This model would have more success at the national or international level.
• This model would have more success if a known brand took the lead. (Again, I always tend to cite NPR.)

There has been much opining about the New York Times pay wall that went up this week. I was quoted in a Neiman Lab post on the topic; I wrote about it for the Reynolds Journalism Institute, where I’m currently a fellow; and I was a guest on WNPR, an NPR station in Connecticut, to discuss the topic with other news professionals.

Here’s one thing that I previously haven’t said publicly: Whether or not they know it, and without identifying it as such, the New York Times has taken a big step towards the NPR model. And that puts them just a stone’s throw away from the Spot.Us model. In some respects, I actually think they are closer and more likely to pull it off than NPR.

Subscription Plan Isn’t About Access

Let’s start by calling a “duck” what it is. The “pay wall” is not a “wall.” It’s incredibly porous. A savvy reader can find a dozen ways around it, from finding a Tweet of the story you’re interested in to removing part of the Times’ URL. In other words, the subscription plan is not about access. People that think the fee is about access are the same folks who think they have to pay AOL for Internet access in order to keep their AOL email address. Savvy readers will know it isn’t about “access” but rather something else. For starters, it benefits the print subscribers, who pay less for digital access than all-digital subscribers. Fair enough.

But I am willing to bet a LOT of people will pay for a “subscription” not for access and not because it comes with their print subscription, but for something else.

Donation Driven Journalism

If there is one thing that Press+ has taught us (aside from the fact that really rich folks can hype up a technology product and sell it off for millions of dollars) it’s that, yes, people will pay for news even if access to is never truly restricted. That’s a limited audience/market, but it exists. Interestingly enough, the price point doesn’t matter as much as one would think. That audience will pay $5 if you ask, and they’ll pay $15 if you set that as the benchmark.

National Public Radio has known about this small market for a LONG time. I could have told you this within 10 minutes of launching Spot.Us. But at least today we can see it as more of a given for the conversation. There is an audience that will pay for content. It’s small, and not a replacement for advertising, but it’s there.

The NYTimes.com subscription plans are not enough to sustain the entire organization, but it is a new revenue stream that didn’t exist before. You can call it a “pay wall” or a “metered wall” but, again, I think we should call a duck a duck. This is a donation system, plain and simple. News organizations don’t want to refer to “metered walls” as “donations,” and I understand why. I’m happy to stroke their hair as they cry into their ink-stained hands. We can call it whatever they want, but it’s a donation because there is no HARD reason for anyone to pay it other than because they want to or are too uninformed about how to get around it.

A Modest Proposal

Assuming the New York Times doesn’t want its future tied to the technical ignorance of the masses the way AOL currently does with its dial-up customers, the next question is: What can the Times give to its new donors? As Dave Winer and Steve Outing have both said:

“Wouldn’t it have been wise to, at this juncture, offer something to sweeten the deal. Something truly exciting and new that you get when you pay the money. Something that makes your palms sweat and your heart beat faster?” (Dave Winer)

Tote bags? Bumper stickers? Membership to a wine of the month club (with wine reviews from the Times sent along with every bottle)?

These incentives are necessary because the Times needs to find other ways to keep a paying customer on board. Where one month somebody might pay, the next they’ll slap their face and say, “Why am I doing this? It’s certainly not for access.”

These tote bag gifts mimic NPR fundraising. But let’s think even further. What could be an incentive that would increase transparency and participation in journalism and not cost the NYT organization infrastructure costs (ie: purchasing and shipping thousands of tote bags)?

Imagine if along with every $15 monthly “metered access” payment a NYTimes.com reader also got five NYT Points. After three months they’ve accumulated 15 NYT Points. Those points can then be used to vote on topics, areas of coverage, or redeemed for the tote bag mentioned above (an excellent plan B).

Again, NPR could do this tomorrow, except — believe it or not — NPR is a bureaucratic nightmare when it comes to how donations are handled. Remember, each NPR station is unique and the mothership NPR, aside from being caught in a culture war, is not allowed to fundraise from individuals the way independent stations are.

But the Times doesn’t have this hangup. Whether they admit it or not, they’ve begun fundraising efforts this week. So will the NYT find something to make it fun for donors? Or do they think that the false claim to “access” is enough?

Opportunity to Interact with the Times Community

I think there are a lot of smart folks at the Times and they’ll be watching how people react and pay/don’t pay for this subscription system. For those that do pay it one month the question is, will they continue to pay? For that, they need to be purchasing something. Call them “NYT Points,” call it “NYT Membership” — I don’t care. But I think a part of it should include giving those members a stake in how the funds from their subscription are spent.

In other words, there could be a new sense of transparency and participatory control in how a news organization spends its funds. With their new metered pay wall, the NYT is just one incy-wincy step away from cracking the code to crowd-funded journalism. Why do I want to pay my $15 this month? Because then I can vote on next month’s NYT coverage. This would be the NYT using a kind of Spot.Us model.

And if that day ever comes, you won’t find anyone happier than me.

At SXSW I had the opportunity to catch up with Kurt Huang, founder of ThankThis, and test the latest iteration of his startup called “Juicy Bits.” I should start with a disclosure: I’m an advisor to ThankThis. But this post will not be a “pitch.” Rather, it’s a call for participation with a startup that has cuffed its ears and is listening for advice.

The original concept behind “Thank This” was to create a “Thank” button publishers would place on their content. Happy readers would click the button and a brief ad would be shown that would create funds for both the publisher and the charity of the readers choice.

In short – it’s a social action button for good. When you take an action the reader gets points that can later be redeemed and the publisher is able to get funds to further its mission. At the moment the ads are text based google ads, but in the future they could be “deal of the day” ads, etc.

You can still see an example of these buttons on my personal blog (click into a post). Feel free to give this blog post a “Thank” and experience this first version of ThankThis.

There were two big problems with this first iteration.

1. Convincing publishers to put in an untested button.
2. Aside from altruism what is the incentive for the reader?

The next pivot of Thank This turned the social action into a social sharing button…. for good! Instead of shortening a URL with Bit.ly you could shorten it with Thank This and get points. This circumvented the need for publishers to get started and also motivated folks to curate content – because they would Tweet or Facebook the URL. But it required an iFrame experience which some folks don’t like. You can see a Thank This curated link of Spot.Us here.

An important thing to note about this iteration and others is that the main thrust of Thank This hasn’t changed. In both cases the button is a social button for good that, when clicked, shows an ad and creates points (later turned into money) for charities and content creators. The main difference is what the ad is wrapped around and why people would click the button. In the first case to support a publisher in the second case because a trusted Twitter friend shared the link.

The latest iteration “JuicyBits” abstracts the Thank This button one step further by creating a reader for Twitter. Think of it like a version .01 of a different kind of TweetDeck.

Here’s the feed for Clay Shirky. It shows all the recent Tweets by Clay that contain a link. If you click on the boxes below you’ll be shown the content he linked to, stripped of ads. It’s actually a nice reading experience. If you like that piece of content you can click “Thank This” and it will create points for you, the Twitter feed that originally shared the link and the content creator. All points can be redeemed to support a charity or the publisher and all points are tracked based on Twitter’s authentication API and the URL that generated content.

I personally like this latest iteration the most. The reading experience is arguably better than the iframe from the second iteration. With enough development it could almost replace TweetDeck or any other Twitter Reader application. That’s actually what I think is the biggest hurdle. It’s a matter of closing the gap between Twitter.com’s web interface and this one. The big hurdle right now being I’m only able to read one Twitter account at a time.

Give this Twitter reader a whirl yourself. The best (cleanest) feeds have stars next to them on the home page of the Juicy Bits reader.

And here’s why you should give it a try. Thank This is a startup with a concept I stand behind. The idea is to create an engaging advertising experience with the right incentives so that people will consume and share content the same way they do right now on the open web, but it will create revenue for publishers. Kurt and myself are under no allusions. We don’t know what people want. Is this the right direction to go? Could a site like this, if improved, ever become the way you catch up with your friends content on Twitter. Or is Thank This barking up the wrong tree?

This is a beta project. The concept has lots of potential but we need feedback to get started. And here’s the best part – just using the Juicy Bits reader can give us that feedback. Kurt will be watching where people click, how they use the site, etc. That will inform future iterations.

Public media has been on the minds and lips of a lot of Americans. Certainly the last few years have seen a growth in public media across the board from Corporation for Public Broadcasting entities (PBS, NPR) to less formal public media entities like PRX and PRI. Recently, as a follow-up to the work of the Knight Commission Barbara Cochran wrote a policy paper “Rethinking Public Media: Mort Local, More Inclusive, More Interactive.” From the Knight Commission blog post:

At a time when government funding for public broadcasting is hotly debated, Rethinking Public Media: More Local, More Inclusive, More Interactive, a new policy paper by Barbara Cochran, offers five broad strategies and 21 specific recommendations to reform public media.
It’s an excellent piece of reading that breaks down some of the roadblocks and opportunities that lay ahead for public media.

Beyond white papers, however, it’s important that the public be able to speak their mind about public media. That’s why thanks to the support of the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program, the institutional home of the Knight Commission on the Information needs of communities in a Democracy, Spot.Us surveyed 500 members about the state of public media in their community.

The goal was to find out where public media is strong, weak and what suggestions the public might have for public media. Not only did this survey raise awareness about the growing role of public media, it supported media as well. Every member of our community that took the survey was given $5 in credits to fund the story of their choice on our site.

And The Survey Says….

How Big Is Your Community?
Before we can examine the survey in depth I should remind folks that this is a sponsored survey of a somewhat self-selecting community (and our community is perhaps more media-savvy than other websites). That said, our first question was aimed at getting a sense of where people lived. One of the trends we often hear is that major metropolitan areas are better served by public media than smaller locations. Our survey affirmed this.

Just over 60 percent of respondents were from major metropolitan areas. Another 17 percent were from large cities. Only a handful (12 percent) came from towns with a population of 50,000 or less. Our survey skewed toward major metropolitan areas and in total they were happier with public media than folks in more rural areas. This should be kept in the back of our minds when we dive into the remaining question and answers.

Spot.Us community member Mike Labonte summed up the frustration with public media in small towns when he wrote his suggestion to improve public media in his town: “Presence. The only public media in my city of 70,000 is the local public access cable TV station.”

The next question in our survey allowed for multiple answers: “Who has an influential role in shaping media in your area?” It’s an important question to ask because while the ecosystem continues to change many charge public media with the role to unite various media forces together. The results of this question were interesting proving once again; as much as things have changed — they also stay the same.

Newspapers and national broadcast television were considered influential by the most respondents. Just over 75 percent of people who took the survey selected papers as being influential. Local bloggers garnered 188 votes or just 37 percent of those that took the survey. While that’s still a hefty number, it was the lowest concrete choice (it performed better than “other”) and came in just below “elected officials.”
Community member Laurie Pumper noted: “One small but telling example: Public radio went out of its way to keep a citizen journalism organization from providing livestreaming of a gubernatorial debate in Minnesota. If an organization accepts public funding, I expect better cooperation with other sources of media.”

Next we asked how people got involved in public media. The respondents had three overwhelming answers: Social media, the general website and donating. The overlap between these three was also very strong. Almost everyone who said they donated engaged through the website and social media. Although the reverse trend was not as strong (i.e. somebody who engaged through social media might not donate) there was still a correlation.

In light of the number of respondents who said they volunteer or worked for public media, the number of people who attended events at their local public media station seemed a little low. Getting out the word can be very important as community member Ben Melançon said : “Dedicating the resources to come and ask what’s up, once a month. Taking matters of interest common to multiple local areas they cover and doing very in-depth reports on them.”
Next we got to the heart of the survey: How effective is public media at serving the needs and interests of diverse members of the community? While the responses to this aren’t an abysmal failure, it does show large room for improvement. A total of 11 percent thought public media in their community was doing a poor job of reflecting diversity. The vast majority of responders selected either “good” (33 percent) or “fair” (32 percent). Because these two combine for 65 percent of all responders it’s worth examining the exact language of this answers choice:

• Fair — There are occasional examples of diverse programming, but it’s not the norm.
• Good — While not perfect, there are obvious efforts to make programming more inclusive.

While these lukewarm answers were the majority only a handful of responders thought public media was doing an “excellent” or “very good” job of reflecting a communities diversity.
And then came the meatiest question: “How well do public media do of informing you about local issues?”

Again we find mixed results, but the overall trend was positive. A majority 69 percent said public media was doing either “average” or “above average” at covering local issues. While it’s great to see so few select “poor” (six percent) or “below average” (17 percent), there is still lots of room for improvement when we note that only eight percent of responders thought public media was doing “fantastic.”

In an interesting contrast with an earlier comment, community member Alexis Gonzales said this about the size of a town:

Because I live in a large city, news media — including public media — just don’t cover ‘neighborhood’ issues. Frankly, I stopped expecting them to do otherwise until I spent time in smaller-but-not-that-much-smaller city (Portland for example) and noticed how public media seemed so much closer to and integrated into the local community. I think Public Media could do a better job of covering local issues by reconsidering what is newsworthy … i.e., neighborhood issues can be of broader interest to the greater community.

Taxes

The survey also threw in a playful question regarding taxes. Since public media’s funding has been a topic of discussion, why not ask the public what they think? The question was arguably loaded, but still worth asking.

The exact language was: “British citizens are taxed $80.36 a year to support the BBC. United States citizens are taxed only $1.36. Knowing it would mean more taxes you believe the following.” Then respondents could decide if they wanted to lower taxes to $0 or raise them to “beat the British.”

This question was asked in part to educate, since many people don’t realize how little our media is subsidized by taxes compared to other countries and in part to provoke responses around a hotly debated topic.

About 20 percent of responders thought the taxes should stay the same or even be lowered to $0. Nearly half thought of expanding the taxes a little either doubling it to $2.70 or expanding it to $30. And perhaps because of how the answer was worded  (“Let’s beat the British”) a whopping 34 percent wanted to raise taxes to $80.37 to fund public media. Either the Spot.Us community has lots of public media fans or a reminder that the British public media is out-funding ours 80-to-1 was too much to bear. (Also note 49 individuals who took the survey work for public media according to their answers to question #3).

From the public’s mouth

Finally, our last open ended question sought advice and input about how public media could improve at the local level. We received 500 responses and below I have republished some of the best with the survey respondents’ permission.

Wendy Carrillo

I live in East LA / Boyle Heights. It’s very rare that good positive stories are told about my community via TV news. LA Times covers some good stories, but it’s not the norm. I would like to see my community being covered w/ national issues other than immigration. Like Latinos who serve in armed forces, or those who are making a difference in the classroom.

Tom Davidson

Engage the emerging local blogosphere — providing them promotion/audience and, potentially, revenue via bundled sales using the bully pulpit of public media. In other words, why can’t a local PBS or NPR station serve the same role as a TBD.com in Washington?

Tim Gihring

They could spice up the reporting. The no rant/no slant approach is appropriate, but the reporting is often simple, dry, and probably not engaging as broad an audience as possible as a result.

Henry Jenkins

Right now, Los Angeles seems poised to lose its PBS station, which is going independent. This is a good news, bad news situation. Some of its best current projects are local and these will continue and grow. But we will also lose some of the programs from PBS which we have come to expect and they will be missed.

Ruth Ann Harnisch

Deploy the resources of journalism majors and graduate students in the many universities and colleges located in and around the major metro areas. Collaborate with universities and colleges to cover more beats, produce more stories, create more outlets, uncover more potential advertisers and train better journalists.

Tom Stites

My community, Newburyport, Mass., is an hour north of Boston, a half hour south of Portsmouth, N.H., and an hour and 10 minutes south of Portland, Me. I listen to public radio from all three, and no one covers Newburyport or its surrounding area. In fact, we’re in a fringe reception area for all the stations. What would be really cool would be to have a low-power, listener-supported station right here in Newburyport. There’s a local AM station that plays old music but has no local news presence.

Perhaps where I live makes me an outlier, but I suspect that my situation is quite common — most public radio stations are in big cities or on university campuses in smaller places. That said, most smaller communities, including mine, don’t have colleges.

Jake Bayless

Public Media is largely the only not-for-profit trusted local and regional source of info, and source of curated content. I’d like to see that trust “capital” realized — my local station is in the process of retooling for the new media revolution — it’s not easy to change the battleship’s direction. More and amplified info like that from the Knight Commission needs to be put out there. The public at large doesn’t yet understand how vital public media SHOULD be in their lives as info consumers. Public Media orgs all should adopt “Community Media Projects” in order to learn, listen and meet the information and democratic needs of the communities they serve… everything else is broken, untrustworthy or unsuitable.

Arthur Coddington

Awareness that public media is frequently a partnership between national providers (NPR) and local stations. Those that don’t understand this partnership can dismiss the programming as not locally relevant. Visibility. Police who are present and interacting with local residents can generate greater trust and participation in public safety. Similar thing could be true of public media. If they are visible — if they are not “they” — then we feel more connected to the stories, more possibility to reach out to them when new issues arrive, etc. Engagement. Partner with schools, libraries and service orgs to unearth essential local stories, create broadcasts about them, and follow up to track impact.

Andria Krewson

Be more aggressive about giving up old ways (and sometimes long-time staffers) to free up resources and time to explore new ways of sharing information. Note on the tax question: I’d support more taxation for public media, but I’m discouraged about the track record used to spend tax money recently and would need total transparency (and some influence) on how money is spent in order to support more taxation.

Chris Mecham

We have a very active NPR-supporting community here but the simple fact is that they are charged with providing service to a huge, mountainous geographic area and while we may, as a community, have an above average rate of contribution, we also have greater infrastructure expenses than many other areas. Considering what Boise State Public Radio does with their resources I think they are doing okay. One of the features of public broadcasting funding in Idaho is that up to a fairly generous limit our contributions are counted as a tax credit. Not a deduction. A credit. “Do I want to give Butch Otter my money or do I want to give Terry Gross my money? Hmmmm.”

Lisa Morehouse

Experiment. Be willing to try and fail at new shows, new ways of delivering the news. Invest in reporting. Pay freelancers a fair wage so that journalists without financial support can enter and stay in the profession (not possible now).

Bill Day

Public media should pioneer efforts to build real-time citizen journalist networks. Using low cost distribution and collation tools, public media could become hubs for high-quality, low cost information sharing — school test scores, water quality, traffic needs, etc.

Sabine Schmidt

Through reaching out to organizations and individuals representing under-served parts of the community, especially economic and ethnic minorities. The demographic makeup of my metro area is changing rapidly due to growing Hispanic, Marshallese, and Hmong populations; except for some Spanish-language newspapers and radio stations, few media outlets report on issues such as immigration, wage theft, bilingual education, etc. Public media could a) report more extensively on those topics — not as “minority” issues but as issues affecting members of our community; this would require b) establishing a broader definition of what our community is; and c), public media could offer internships and fellowships to young and/or freelance journalists, especially because the local NPR station is run by the university’s journalism department.

Antonio Roman-Alcala

I like the Bay Citizen model, and the Public Press … one for exposing local issues to a broader audience, the other for in depth local news for locals. I don’t know if that counts as public media? Overall, I don’t pay much attention to TV news, even public channels…so I’m not sure about that. Public media seems generally underfunded; I’d like to see more funding for it, as well as movement towards a more public-serving private news media (though we know, of course, that’s easier said than done).

Alexis Gonzales

Because I live in a large city, news media — including public media — just don’t cover “neighborhood” issues. Frankly, I stopped expecting them to do otherwise until I spent time in smaller-but-not-that-much-smaller cities (Portland for example) and noticed how public media seemed so much closer to and integrated into the local community. I think Public Media could do a better job of covering local issues by reconsidering what is newsworthy … i.e. neighborhood issues can be of broader interest to the greater community.

Kaitlin Parker

Find positive happenings to report in communities that are typically only covered when something negative happens there.

Anthony Wojtkowiak

For lack of a better phrase, they need to grow some balls. My town in New Jersey is influenced by political boss George Norcross, the unions, and the mafia. And that’s not even the corruption and hubris that goes on in the city itself. What our reporters really need is assertiveness training, media law training, and self defense courses. But most of all, they need the courage to use all of that stuff.

Todd O’Neill

Our public radio and public television are separate entities that don’t work together. Although our public radio is beefing up it’s news reporting it seems simple to bring that reporting over to television. But public media is NOT JUST NPR and PBS. We have struggling cable public access community (no funding or support from the city) here and a number of online only community journalism operations (including a Knight grantee) that are all doing their own thing without coordination. Big Public Media (NPR/PBS) should be a leader to bring all of these “under the tent” and provide a real media public service to the community.

Charles Sanders

Actually, local issues aren’t my concern. I wish public media reinforced its international coverage and improved its drama, comedy … content. I envy the BBC.

Martin Wolff

As someone who listens to public media daily, it is sad that I have to try hard to think about a local issue being covered. In that respect, almost anything would improve the coverage as it feels almost, but not quite, non-existent. When local issues are covered they seemingly come in only two forms: 1. A feel good issue that is barely an issue and will create nearly zero discourse in the community. For example, holiday-lights festivals. 2. Wimpy. The interviewer/broadcaster will do nothing while two sides of an issue actively lie to the community and directly contradict each other. Fixing #1 is easy — nobody really terribly cares, so we don’t need 10 minutes of coverage about a mayor flipping the switch and lighting a tree up. Fixing #2 is harder. The public media must stand up for itself better and call out the guilty parties. The public media must step up its role as a sort of police officer of society and arrest those who break the rules.

Yvette Maranowski

ALWAYS retain vigorous capacity for citizen reporters. Fund them with equipment and training. People are busy now and have to work independently, but with lifelines keeping them connected to their media outlets. Use McChesney and Nichol‘s idea of $200 in tax credit going to every citizen, so that the citizen can donate their credit to whatever organization they choose — such as journalistic ones. Constantly produce and air/publish material about the importance of journalism — keep hitting the public with that message!

Andy Edgar

Survey people in the neighborhood for their backgrounds, locations and topics of interest, get them interested in issues that affect everyone. Focus on things like air and water quality, advice on picking up litter and why it’s important not to litter, community events, getting to know neighbors’ talents/skills, healthy alternatives to fast food and big box grocery stores. Community based ways to prevent crime/hate acts should be talked about explored and tried.

William Forbes

In my community (Minneapolis/St Paul, MN), “Public” radio and television are HUGE cash cows. They do a good job and are influential but the real inclusive and diverse media that truly serve the under-represented populations of our area are Community Radio Stations, in particular KFAI. MN Public Television/NPR/MPR/PBS could do a much better job but they are more concerned with maintaining (and increasing) corporate and government funding than with covering issues that don’t always have universal appeal.

Michael Hopkins

In its current state, public media is dangerous because it offers the illusion of complete objectivity and truth. Too many people listen to it uncritically because of this. I would like to see public media representatives ask much tougher questions of everybody and hire a much more diverse staff of journalists. The illusion will still be there, but it will match reality more closely.

Jeffrey Aberbach

My community now has a Patch website. It’s too early to judge how successful it will be in reaching out to our diverse community, but so far it appears to be more successful than the established, corporate-owned media outlet in town (a poorly staffed small daily newspaper that generates little local content).

Jeddy Lin

In my area, despite being close to a large university, not much of a public media movement exists. A more visible public media would go a long way towards creating a more progressive, diverse community.

Kitty Norton

They could provide better coverage for schools. They seem to report statistics and not real life goings-on in our schools to the community.

Luke Gies

I don’t have any television or newspaper service, so I am somewhat “self isolating” from our local media. I get most of my news from the internet, so I think one area of improvement for local media would be to increase the content and improve the usability of their websites. That is more of an improvement in distribution than in “covering the issues,” but distribution is a key component to the reporting of news.

If you’ve already written the application, why not check out the the December 10^th deadline to enter the 2011 SXSW Accelerator presented by Microsoft BizSpark is just a week away.  SXSW Accelerator returns on its third edition to showcase some of the web’s most exciting innovations like yours company.  This event provides an outlet for companies to present their new online Entertainment products, Social networking applications, News related technologies, Music related technologies, Health technologies, or Innovative web-based technology services to a panel of industry experts, early adapters, and representatives from the Venture Capitalist community.  Past example of judges have been Guy Kawasaki, Paul Graham of Y Combinator, Tim Chang of Norwest Venture Partners, Robert Scoble, Jeff Pulver of 140 Conference, Chris Shipley of Demo, Tom Conrad of Pandora to name a few.  We invite your company to join us for this incredible event, as we highlight the technology market’s most impressive new innovations.  Happening March 14-16, 2011 in Austin, Texas please apply to our event at http://sxsw.com/interactive/accelerator or if a music technology company visit http://sxsw.com/music/accelerator The application deadline is December 10, 2010.

Disclaimer: I’m advising the SXSW Accelerator this year.

In some respects CFS gave me a needed shot of adrenaline into the Spot.Us project. If I’m not pushing boundaries and trying something new, I get bored. To date I still know of no other media entity trying anything exactly like it.

So what is community-focused sponsorship?
The quick version: We sell the sponsoring organization a form of engagement on our site (a quiz, survey, etc). Anyone who engages with the sponsor gets a slice of our sponsorship budget. They decide where the funds go. The sponsor gets the anonymized information from community members. Each side creates value for the other. Give it a whirl thanks to HP Partners PCRush.com.

When I first came up with the idea I approached the Harnisch Foundation for support. This is a foundation that considers news and information, among others, a priority. Bless their journalistic hearts. More-over they are interested in finding new models of sustainability. Bless their bold hearts.

When I told them about community-focused sponsorship I made a bold claim that, in truth, I wasn’t 100 percent sure I could deliver on. I told them I could double the money they gave Spot.Us. I asked for $15,000. They gave us $20,000.

I’m happy to announce that not only did we double up on this larger figure, we’ve made $7,250, to spare – for a total of $47,250.

What happened to the money?

Some of it went toward developing the infrastructure of our model. We already had a credit system on Spot.Us, but the database structure needed to be cleaned and a user-interface created, etc. I’ll spare you the geekery so much as to say, it took some work, but it wasn’t insane thanks to early thinking about our credit system and the fine work of CTO Erik Sundelof.

Some was used to prime the pump. When we got our first sponsorship from FreePress.net, we added some of our funds to extend the sponsorship. We even created a few of our own surveys/quizzes.

A worst case scenario of the Harnisch grant would have been if we had not sold any sponsorships. In that case – this would be like many other grants that fund content – except instead of deciding how the funds would get spent internally, Spot.Us was looking to engage community members to make that decision. Still worth it in my humble opinion. Whereas most nonprofit news organizations that get grants decide internally (the publisher makes the call) how to spend the money – we looked to the community.

I triple-dog-dare any major nonprofit news organization to take a little of their foundation budget on the side and let the community vote on how it should be spent. (Oh no he didn’t just bust a triple-dog-dare!)

So how did we double up?

Talking about money is never easy for me. I am a natural salesperson, but when it comes down to the closing and to put up a dollar figure, I wince. As Brad Flora will attest, you need somebody who can make the sales-kill. I’m learning.

Somehow I’ve managed to sell a few sponsorships.

Mortgage Revolution (our first) gave us 6k to get us started. That was quickly distributed.

FreePress did two sponsorships with us for 1k each (we matched it with 2k from the Harnisch grant).

AARP gave us two sponsorships totaling out at of 4.5k.

The Aspen Institute, marketing the Knight Commission report on news and information needs of communities, did a sponsorship for 1k (also matched by Harnisch grant).

Clay Shirky did a speaking gig and was given the chance to make a donation to the nonprofit of his choice. He chose Spot.Us but instead of keeping the money, we distributed it via a sponsorship model.

We did a focused survey for Way Out West News. The bootstrapped operation gave us $250. Because they are a news organization starting out and the survey was inline with Spot.Us’ mission – we subsidized it with $500.

And finally the biggie. HP Partners did a whopping 10k sponsorship! The main partner benefactor of the sponsorship so far has been PCRush.com.

Total: $28,750 raised for journalism.
That is ALL money that goes towards reporting (spot.us did start taking a commission near the end – details below). These funds are unlocked a few dollars at a time by community members (roughly 5,600 acts of engagement). That’s 5,600 choices made by members of the public to support independent reporting. That might not be earth-shattering in pageviews, but in terms of engagement it’s huge. The average amount of time spent on a survey is 2:45 (much more valuable than a banner advert).

Total spent from the original Harnisch grant?
Six thousand on development and just over six thousand on sponsorships.

Remaining in the Harnisch budget – $8,000
(so I might be able to turn the original 20k into more).

Un-expected

The extra funds from Clay Shirky was un-expected. And I’ll be honest with you – there was a fair amount of time I considered not giving it away via community-focused sponsorship, but saving the money for an organizational rainy day (see my triple-dog-dare above).

Even without those funds Spot.Us still would have doubled-up its original investment from Harnisch.

When I spoke with Clay to get his permission to publicly distribute the funds he brought up an important point – that this model shouldn’t be about Push/Pull advertising. The sponsored engagement shouldn’t dangle the $5 above a community members head and make them jump through an annoying hoop. This, in the long run, will isolate Spot.Us from its community members. As we get larger and more corporate sponsors (fingers crossed) this will have to be something we really “push” back on – pardon the pun.

Since Clay didn’t have anything specific to sell, although you should buy his book, he let us do whatever we wanted with his sponsorship. Keeping in mind his suggestion – we asked folks for their view on objectivity in journalism. The idea is that we (a. genuinely wanted to know (b. this is a stimulating conversation/question and (c. once we got responses we could turn around and share their aggregated answers creating value back for the the collective community. See: “What the Spot.Us community thinks of objectivity in journalism.”

This final analysis became another selling point we did not anticipate. When I showed it to Free Press, now on their second sponsorship, they wanted a similar analysis. On that note: here’s what the Spot.Us community thinks of public media.

In both cases the analysis became a topic of discussion in the Twittersphere and beyond. Here were REAL numbers based on REAL responses from people who were asking and answering difficult questions. That it funded independent media was icing on the cake from the sponsors perspective.

In some respects we are doing what Pew Center for Journalism does – in a less scientific and faster way. As organizations will constantly need to keep a finger on the pulse of things – I think our sponsorship model will be a way they can do that and support journalism at the same time. (I also double-dog dare Pew to sponsor a survey on Spot.Us).

Obstacles

I still don’t have a sales team. It’s just me emailing people I meet or know.

I am confident this sponsorship model sells, but it doesn’t sell itself – somebody has to be there to make the phone calls and talk people through it.

What next?

Sell more sponsorships any way I can – without falling into the push/pull trap mentioned above. I think that would be a death-spiral.

We hope to create an affiliate model whereby anyone can sell a sponsorship and earn a commission. I am in talks with SacramentoPress to be the first to try this out. They have a sales team (mostly does local) and if they can sell a sponsorship – I will gladly let them keep a healthy commission.

I also believe that this sponsorship model could be a way to bring in foundation support outside of the traditional foundations that support journalism. It is great that Knight, MacArthur, Patterson, McCormick, Harnisch and other foundations support journalism (they should triple-dog dare their large grantees to let the community decide as well). I believe that by sponsoring quizzes and surveys about topics of interest to them – we can get more foundations interested in journalism. A foundation that supports child education might not ever see funding independent journalism as high on their priority list. At best they would support journalism about children’s education which while well-intentioned misses the point of independent reporting that reflects a community’s issues – instead of trying to dictate concerns.

Through this model that foundation could raise awareness on issues of child education, getting feedback and educating the public and at the same time support independent reporting. it would be icing on the cake.

Finally: We are taking steps on Spot.Us to emphasize the community-focused sponsorships and de-emphasize donating from an individuals own bank account. With our HP sponsorships there are more funds to distribute than we can with our current audience size. It may turn out to be a bad idea. We might realize that by de-emphasizing donations we are leaving money on the table. But so far people have reacted very positively and we should give people more opportunities to support reporting without having to whip out their wallet. We won’t remove the ability to donate funds – it just won’t be the first option people see. Rather – they will see the option to earn credits until all those options have been completed.

(UPDATE: The above paragraph turned into a failed experiment, people complained, we reversed).

UPDATE #2: Spot.Us has always said that commission would be “optional and transparent.” well, now it’s just transparent. We take 5 percent out of every community-focused sponsorship. Which means when you earn $5 in credits and you start to donate $4.71 goes to the pitch of your choice and .29 goes to Spot.Us. Hey, can you blame us? If so – let us know in the comments.

We also need to build out the types of engagements we can produce. We started by mimicking parts of a Google Form. We still can’t do everything Google Forms offers. But we will get there. There are tons of potential engagement opportunities we could build.

Profits are killing journalism.

Publishers and editors care more about the bottom line than the quality of their reporting.  Newsrooms are shrinking, as a result, and good stories have gone untold.  The public is worse off because of it.

So goes one argument, at least, in the debate about public funding of journalism.  It’s a hot topic that appears immune to any clear-cut solution, and it’s shaking the foundation of what it means to do journalism and the best way to do it.  Among the big questions are:

Should public funding expand to cover the gaps left by the shrinking private news business? Could it expand without government support, and would this create conflicts? Would a heavily subsidized public media serve us better than the private media?  If so, how?

With a sponsorship from Free Press, we asked the Spot.Us community to tell us what they thought.  Then, we invited the 407 users who took the survey to decide where the sponsorship dollars would go, which is to say, we handed over a part of our budget to them, in return for their two cents.

SURVEY RESULTS

Keep in mind, the survey was not scientific, and there was a degree of audience self-selection, i.e., the Spot.Us community.  Nonetheless, with several hundred respondents, we did get a diverse set of answers. One interesting thing to note is that while a previous survey showed a split (almost 50/50) in the “objectivity” debate this survey on public/private media showed a much more one-sided response. This might be because, as previously suspected, Spot.Us’ community overlaps with the “public media” demographic.

To begin, the majority of respondents reported that they listened to NPR (71 percent), read the news online (79 percent), or used nonprofit news sources (58 percent), while the minority reported that they received a newspaper at home (37 percent) or donated to nonprofit news media (41 percent).  From these numbers, we can see among other things that, although the majority listen to NPR or use nonprofit news sources, there is a sizeable gap between using nonprofit media and donating to them.

In response to a question about programming—“In general, how would you rate the quality of
news, arts and education programming on public media versus commercial media?—the vast majority (74 percent) said the programming on public media is of higher quality.  A mere 19 percent said the programming on public and private media is of equal quality, and only 5 percent said public programming is of lower quality.

Half way through the survey we even switched the ordering of these potential answers to ensure no undue influence. The first half of the respondents saw the answer “public media is of higher quality” first and the second half saw that answer last. In either case – the majority viewed the programming as higher quality.

When asked if they would support the creation of a public media endowment to increase funding for educational programs, arts, and investigative journalism, the respondents overwhelmingly said yes (84 percent), with only 3 percent saying no and the rest undecided.  Likewise, they would support overwhelmingly (93 percent) the creation of a matching grant program that would combine foundation grants with public funding to support innovation and investment in local news and journalism.

So far, all of this suggests that the respondents like to use nonprofit media; they believe public programming is of higher quality than private programming; they would support public endowment and matching grant programs to increase funding; however, they do not necessarily make personal donations to those ends.

The respondents, with their generally favorable view of public media, also said more conflicts arise in journalism that relies on commercial advertising than in journalism that relies on taxpayer funding.  Fifty-seven percent believed that to be true, while 12 percent said taxpayer funding creates more conflicts, and 31 percent said neither creates more conflicts and that strong firewalls between funding and journalists can prevent bias.

We also asked a few open-ended questions.

The first one was, “What should be the role of public and noncommercial media in the future of journalism?”  Below are a few anecdotal responses from Spot.Us members who gave us permission to publish their views.

Journalism should be supported by the public, but traditionally the expectation by newspaper executives has been to not ask for the public to support their product. Journalists and news executives have an obligation to build better arguments for the public to support the news. In order for that to happen, though, journalism needs to demonstrate value to readers.
– Denise Lockwood

Non-profit and other alternative funding models will increasingly have to make up for the loss of advertising funded journalism. NPR has done this already but more needs to happen. There will need to be a broader range of non-profit media orgs than we have right now, and non-profits focused on substantive issues (environment, human rights, etc.) will increasingly become news providers themselves. Hopefully, some of these new iterations will be exemplars in terms of how to establish and benefit from partnerships and collaborative models. We may see more “temporary” journalism outlets as non-profit news outlets spring up and die out in this transitional period.
– Melissa Wall

Journalist(s) need to figure out how to make their product of value to the community. While I love NPR and that model, nothing is wrong with a profit. Good journalism should be able to support itself, but for decades now people have ranked journalist right up there with lawyer, car salesman and politician. That has to change and we need to be honest why people feel that way.

– Eddie North-Hager

Ideally, publicly funded media should focus solely on communications that are not commercially viable. However there has to be focus on what the public is interested in, not just what is in the public interest. Without remaining relevant and interesting, public media becomes irrelevant.

– Spot.Us Community Member

Another question should be what is the public’s role in public media. I think public media should be a place where people can go to tell their stories (think storycorps) where discussions can happen where people of all sides can hear each others voices (think bbc’s have your say); chicago’s vocalo is interesting in this way. Recent “pubcamps” are interesting in this way. NPR opening up its API is interesting in this way, in that they invite programmers and technologists to participate. I think the quality of public broadcasting is high, but airtime is at a premium, they should find ways to put MORE programs on the web and open up the airwaves for new talent. I think funding is an issue too. I live in Paris and stream programs live from any number of stations; I also podcast my favorites. I don’t know which station I should support, I know I want to support specific programs. I know I want to support NPR; but I don’t have a local station and I don’t know that I want one.

– John Tynan

The second open-ended question was, “In the past, government has provided tax breaks to media companies, given broadcasters free licenses for public airwaves, funded PBS and NPR, and subsidized newspapers through legal ads and postal rates. What should be the government’s role in the future?”  Below, again, are a few anecdotal responses:

Regulation is necessary (else, the commercial media could say anything they wanted, regardless of effect or truth), but I don’t like the government’s involvement in the money behind broadcasting.  Things start to sound like China with its enmasse censorship of media incoming and outgoing. Free speech should remain free – free of censorship and influence. If you think publishing or reporting a story will keep the government from sending you extra funds, you aren’t likely to print it. Thus, the free press becomes the mouthpiece for a government and nothing more.

This said, I think government subsidizing of NPR and PBS is important because these are services funded by donations from watchers/listeners, and that is who they (should) have loyalty to first because that is where the money is coming from, rather than political parties or politicians.

– Kaylene Narusuke

The old models don’t work because in the 1980s, newspapers made a lot of money from ads and became very profitable, changing the expectations from the owners. Those expectations haven’t changed while the competition for ads has. Newspapers adopted the USA-Today model, dumbing down stories, writing shorter and more shallow stories. People want deep, well written stories in any format. Government agencies could support investigative reporting, specialty reporting, and reporting on the arts, but the public has to be willing to pay for responsible journalism.

– Yvonne

Government should recognize that high-quality journalism is an important part of a healthy democracy, and that well-informed citizens are more engaged and more likely to vote. Government should expand direct funding for public media beyond PBS and NPR by creating a grant program for organizations developing new kinds of public-media models.

– Lila LaHood

I don’t see a problem with calculated tax breaks for the media industry whether it’s limiting taxes on the purchases of paper products or electronic devices. To me that’s no different than oil companies, banks, light manufacturing getting financial breaks or incentives to conduct business. Those who represent converged or multimedia take issue with this, citing these as out-dated mediums with failed business models. Therefore, they should not be buoyed with tax dollars and in a true capitalism, failed businesses disappear and make way for newer, better models.

– Kevin Smith

All of these things are helpful, but American journalism really needs something more revolutionary right now. Stop thinking about tax breaks and advertising and start thinking about something equal to the National Endowment for the Arts, but replace ‘Arts’ with ‘Journalism’. I hope our leaders act now before we lose the 4th Estate, and a generation of enthusiastic young journalists.

– Daysha Eaton

So there you have it, the views of the Spot.Us community on public vs. private journalism.  Any of it surprise you?  Confuse you?  Bore you?  Tell us your thoughts in the comments section!

I know this because Erica Smith knows this. These numbers are arrived via her site Paper Cuts which she started as a non-scientific way of estimating newspaper layoffs.

Here’s the nut graf: Eight months into 2010 and we are still shy of 2,000 layoffs or buyouts. Now, if there were ever a number you’d want to see lowered, it’s this. But it does raise an eyebrow.

This is a dramatic shift. I thought maybe it was a mistake so I contacted Erica, who I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, to see if it was accurate and if she had any thoughts. Her quote below.

Either I’ve gotten back at tracking them down or, more likely there’s no more meat on the bone. There’s not much bone left either. The only cutting left seems to come from outsourcing and consolidating. Granted, there are several black pins on the map [for 2010] — those are “unknown” markers — but not enough (I hope) for 14K.

I do expect I’ll be adding more layoffs in the next two months, though. A few details are coming out on Gannett’s consolidation plans. Here at the Post-Dispatch, our “no-layoff” guarantee ends Sept. 28; I don’t see that ending with punch and cookies. And as more fiscal years come to an end, more papers are going to be looking at their budgets and making cuts … somewhere.

I don’t know what the drop in cuts signifies. It could be a good thing (newspapers are bouncing back – unlikely) or as Erica notes – it could mean they’ve cut down to the bone and there is nothing left to tighten. Either way this is something to note. Something has shifted.

For almost two years now, Spot.Us has been growing and evolving. I’m very happy to say that the last month has possibly been the most exciting since our launch. We grew almost 30 percent in terms of users. Even more exciting is that the technology behind Spot.Us is starting to show real signs of scale between our expansion into Seattle and other regions, which I’ll describe below.

So what’s happened in the last month?

Community Centered Advertising

I’m normally good about breaking news of Spot.Us on my personal blog and Idea Lab. But last month we unleashed a feature somewhat quietly, using just an email to registered members of Spot.Us (sign up for our newsletters here). It was later covered in Poynter.

We call it “Community Centered Advertising.” Before I go off on a rant about it, let me ask long time readers, friends, acquaintances, lovers of journalism or revenue geeks to try the following demonstration.

In less than two minutes and five clicks you can help an independent reporter (and Spot.Us).

1. Go to Spot.Us and login or register.
2. Click “Earn Credits” in the header navigation.
3. Take a simple and short survey.
4. Submit the survey and earn $5. Then you’ll be taken to a page with all our active pitches.
5. Select the pitch of your choice (this is the fun part), click “Apply Credits,” and confirm that decision.

Bill Mitchel from Poynter wrote about it and summed it up: “In some ways, it seems like a no-brainer: Encourage consumer engagement with advertising by giving users a stake in deciding how the revenue gets spent … Spot.Us itself is an experiment in transparency and control of money for news. This is just a matter of applying it to advertising.”

What we are doing is making it very transparent how advertising money gets spent on Spot.Us. It’s so transparent that we give up ownership of that decision to members of the public who engage with the advertisement. Spot.Us is sponsoring this current campaign but we already have our next sponsor lined up. (Interested in being a sponsor? Contact info@spot.us).

Is It Working?

1. The numbers don’t lie: Our engagement percentages went up drastically. When fundraising online you can expect a certain amount of attrition. People will view your site and not engage. It’s a big mental burden to reach for your wallet even if it’s not a financial burden. Folks like Beth Kanter have been talking about it for years; there is an engagement
ladder and people have to start from the bottom. Well, now the bottom level of engagement on Spot.Us can still support stories financially at no cost to the user. As expected, user engagement went up dramatically — it quadrupled, in fact.

2. The numbers got better: We also saw something that I didn’t expect to happen — we got more financial contributions on Spot.Us as well. I figured with the “Earn Credits” option nobody would donate their own money. To the contrary, many did. The $5 in credits was an appetizer.

3. The challenges for this revenue stream: I feel confident that this model is ethically sound in that the advertising won’t influence the content — at least, no more than could be argued advertising impacts content for any publication. That said, we want sponsorships that engage people in a positive way. Wouldn’t it be great if people were engaging with the advertisement not just because they wanted the credits, but because it served their information needs somehow? Still, we are a non-profit startup. Unlike the Bay Citizen which had $8.7 million at their launch, we have just me to try and sell sponsorships on top of everything else. So challenge  number one is finding a way to sell sponsorships quick and easy. To do this we need a broader appeal. Which brings us to the next part of
this update.

Spot.Us Creeping into Your Town (Lessons on Assumptions)

Today we are publishing a pitch that is in collaboration with both The Uptake
and MinnPost.com, two of Minnesota’s finest nonprofit news organizations. 

There have been two aspects of Spot.Us that, since launching, I realize have not worked the way I envisioned. One was around the idea of distributing content. Most news organizations are adverse to running content that isn’t 100 percent produced by them or produced by somebody within the mainstream media club. Hell, even the larger nonprofits have trouble distributing their content to the AP. It’s a challenge and we’ve gotten around it by partnering with news organizations from the start of a project. That was a shift from my original vision.

It’s time now to question my original vision of expansion, and this creep into Minnesota is a perfect example. The pitch we’re publishing today is to cover the gubernatorial race via video from The Uptake coupled with reporting from MinnPost. You couldn’t find two better partners to do this. Meanwhile, they have large enough audiences such that if 10 percent or so take action on “community centered advertising” we’d start fundraising large amounts. Even better, it wouldn’t divert from their regular fundraising efforts. If anything, it might bolster it by giving potential future donors an easy route in.

But this is the only pitch we have in the Minnesota region (more are welcome — just click “Start a Story.”)

Meanwhile, over in Seattle, we’ve funded two stories and a third is close. After that’s done, I’m going to have to start emailing around to convince reporters to create a pitch. Not an impossible task, but a drain nonetheless.

At the same time, I’m getting pitches from places like Portland Oregon, Sacramento California, Vermont, Maine, etc. Even as far away as Guatemala (international is a whole other can of worms). These locations don’t necessarily merit their own network. I don’t suspect I could get a steady stream of pitches from Maine. But the pitch that has come my way is pretty good. It is local and covers civic issues. I certainly wouldn’t want that to die on the vine because I couldn’t find three other Maine reporters to create sister pitches.

From the start, I thought Spot.Us would expand ala Craigslist: Pick locations, create sub-domains and let people aggregate around them. Certainly San Francisco and Los Angeles have worked like this. We always have about five active pitches in both locations at any given time. Seattle however, might not be that way. I fear I’m viewed as an outsider — perhaps even as “competition.” And perhaps outside of The Uptake and MinnPost.com, I will have no luck in Minnesota either (I hope I’m wrong).

But that shouldn’t stop me from expanding. Especially not when I am getting very solid pitches from around the country.

Which is to say: Spot.Us might need a new organizing principle for expanding. Maybe the network or “region” shouldn’t be a factor at all; maybe we will expand to wherever a decent pitch comes calling, be it in New York or Sante Fe. Making this shift would undoubtedly raise more questions, such as how we decide what pitches to take, etc. But I am prepared to have that conversation.

What do you think?

As many know I used to be a tech/media reporter. If I were reporting at SXSW the media story would certainly be AOL’s Seed. TechCrunch nailed the story already, so in true blogger fashion I am going to opine below. I am also going to roughly quote some of the folks I spoke with about the subject over the course of the day – but will not attribute these quotes. Our conversations were between colleagues and I don’t want to compromise anyone. I’ll email these individuals and update the post if they are comfortable with attribution.

A lot can be said about AOL’s Seed and Demand Media. They are often referred to as “content farms.” I am not sure if that is accurate and I can be a stickler about labels – but I’ll use that for now, as I lack a better term.  Some have even pointed to them as a battle for the Internet’s soul – no small wager.

I’ll try and start on a positive note – where I think these huge mega-companies share something with Spot.Us.

One inspiration for Spot.Us is to modernize the freelance process. It is horribly antiquated. Fifty years ago freelancers would type out their pitches and send them snail mail to editors and wait for a snail mail response. Today we email our pitches. But other than the medium of our communication – nothing has changed. The process is still very much one-to-one. It is not transparent and the dirty truth of freelancing is that you need to have a relationship with the editor. They are in charge. Spot.Us tries to make that process more transparent and have a one-to-many communication prospect.

I can see where Demand Media and Seed are rolling up their sleeves to modernize freelancing (from the perspective of a mulit-million dollar publisher). Spot.Us is trying to do this from the perspective of the freelancer. I often joke that we are the mom-pop version of Demand Media. Instead of algorithm ordering content, we let people custom order content which will be hand-crafted.

The obvious downside of course is that they pay is tough for content producers.

One individual (Cody Brown) I spoke with asked a very poignant question: If Jimmy Wales were announce that Wikipedia was going to start paying editors $7 an hour wages or something close to it – it would ruin the whole system. If Demand Media and Seed want to become huge “content farms” answering everyone’s potential questions – maybe throwing meaningless amounts of money isn’t the way.

His companion noted that when Wikipedia first started out as Nupedia Jimmy Wales did pay exert editors. According to her over the course of three years those editors only produced 25 articles. If Wales hadn’t pivoted Wikipedia (then called Nupedia) would have failed.

I’ve also experienced this. In the beginning of Spot.Us we started paying the peer review editors 10% of the money raised. We ended up attracting people that were motivated by money. But since it wasn’t that much money – they weren’t that motivated. Since making the peer review editor role volunteer, I’ve found the volunteers are much more involved.

Lesson: You get what you pay for. The follow up question is whether or not people care asked by Robert Hernandez. Since the majority of content from Demand Media and AOL Seed is going to be about “cupcakes and butterflies” as he put it, maybe it doesn’t matter what quality the writing is.

The counterpoint: Another colleague whose opinion I hold in very high regard noted that the real danger is that Google could lose value. If Demand Media continues to put out the amount of content they do – but it’s at a mediocre level, and this content is in direct response to Google queries – the search engine could rapidly lose value.

Which raises the question: Would Google do something to demote Demand Media Content? Would that be an “evil” act? It would certainly be one where the search giant would integrate human judgment into its search returns over its own algorithm which would otherwise be gamed to ensure Demand Media content to be at the top.

My general impression, which was confirmed by others, is that of these two Demand Media is the “clockwork orange.” Its insides are all mechanics. They make no attempt to hide it. They use an algorithem to determine what content they’ll produce and from there its a mechanistic system to produce the content. The humans are only involved out of necessity. Even the Matrix needed humans as batteries. AOL’s Seed isn’t guilt free of this – but it appears to make more of an attempt to include human judgment and editorial. The hiring of Saul Hansell, among other decisions, are obvious examples.

The final thought.

What Demand Media and Seed are doing isn’t necessarily journalism. This is especially true for Demand Media. What they produce is content. Plain and simple. The majority of it being answers to mundane questions “How do I tie a square knot?”

In this respect – individual journalists don’t need to be concerned about the exploitation of writers (although – the writes opt-in so exploitation itself is arguable). Most reporters I meet aren’t in the business of answering search engine queries. Nobody’s lunch is being eaten.

But – at a deeper level the journalism INDUSTRY should be very concerned. What this represents is yet another HUGE opening in the content/media space online that is being overtaken by venture capital money and brand new companies. A Gannet, Hearst, etc, should be in this space.

Why does it matter what kind of company owns this space?

Simple: Old profits from classifieds and advertising used to be pumped back into the system to prop original reporting because that was something newspapers did. Newspapers were always really in the advertising classifies business – but they would use their 30% profit margins on reporting.

If Demand Media starts making 30% profit margins, I don’t suspect they’ll start throwing that into investigative or original reporting. That’s not what they do. AOL’s Seed might – but that’s a hope, not a promise.

People love to point at Craigslist and blame it for the fall of newspapers. Aside from being economically questionable I often point out that the technology behind Craigslist wasn’t mind-blowing. Any newspaper company could have built that and today would own the classifieds business online. And who knows what they’d do with that profit? Fund some great reporting I suspect (and kudos to Craig Newmark who with his wealth has created the Craigslist Foundation).

With great power and money comes great responsibility. I’ll even give Demand Media and AOL the benefit of the doubt and say they’ll make charitable contributions to society with any new-found wealth. But will journalism be where they plant their flag? That’s a missed opportunity for newspaper companies.

Now for the personal updates

Before I dive into the subject of this post: AOL’s Seed and Demand Media, a personal update.

1. My SXSW talk yesterday went great. It was followed by a round table discussion which was a bit more contentious. The founder of Gothamist was of the opinion that community funded reporting can’t work. My response: Then NPR never should be alerted immediately. What we do is similar to NPR except we add transparency and control for where the contributions go. To say “it doesn’t work” when what I think he really means is “it won’t replace advertising” is lazy thinking.

2. A personal highlight: If we are in The Reformation of media then I often refer to Clay Shirky as our Martin Luther. While at AOL Seed’s party Clay walked up. I was ready to introduce myself. I had met him before, but he is the caliber of person for whom I would fully understand needing to introduce myself again. I am deeply humbled that he is familiar with me and my work. I often say that I am on the front lines of a battlefield. I’ve chosen my specific battleground, but the war is much larger. If that is the case – Shirky is a General.