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.

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.

First: Perhaps you’ve heard of South By Southwest, a festival that I lovingly refer to as “spring break for the Internet.”

This year I’m on the advisory board for the SXSW Accelerator. Why, you ask? Because this year they are looking for, among other things, news related startups.

News Related Technologies – This category pertains to applications and technologies to support the dissemination of news and information for communities, both on the content side or on the underlying business model side (an example is advertising). This could include technologies related to data, text, documents, mapping, engagement, among other areas.

If you’ve never been to SXSW I highly recommend it. Leave your suit at home – this is not a “conference” in the traditional sense. It’s a who’s who in the technology and venture capital space. Getting a chance to demo an idea there could be huge for any startup. The rope is there – now you have to tug. Learn how to apply.

Community-Funded Reporting Spreads

Check out GoJournalism.ca. It’s for all you Canadians – eh.

It is the second international site to use our code. The first – YouCommNews.com is Australian.

There is also SpotUs.It and YouCapital.It, and the soon to launch Emphas.is. While these sites don’t use our code base – they are very similar in concept. For that, I welcome them with open arms. When I first launched Spot.Us the idea was a foreign concept. Having competition is a GOOD thing. It’s a big validation of the concept and the work we’ve done at Spot.Us.

My only regret so far is the name “Spot Us” which, as apparent in the last three examples, may have started a bad trend in website names that double as puns. My bad

Related Posts

Finally: A post I published at the Reynolds Journalism Institute blog on the “Newsroom Efficiency Index.” I may republish it in full on Digidave soon. It’s just a little experiment in my thinking about how news organizations can scale up by figuring out how to scale down first.

Tomorrow on the RJI blog I will probably write about how to “Keep your head down” when building a startup. That I will def. repost here soon, as I believe it is a valuable lesson that I can only take away after having been in the game now for two years.

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!

You already know the setup: Today the Bay Area media scene just gained an 800lb gorilla. The news broke last night by the Bay Guardian was known by some a little earlier and had been expected for months. Details from The New York Times and Paid Content. Steve Katz and Alan Mutter chime in as well.

Let me be the first blogger to tip my hat to you. Major kudos. There are a lot of folks with as much money as you – but they don’t give it back to their community the way you have. Nobody can argue that giving 5 million to start a nonprofit news organization is anything but classy. You rock!

A few months ago some of your consultants contacted me for advice. They reached out to many of my new media friends as well. Since my advice was solicited for two afternoons in that stage, I thought I’d continue and discuss the potentials that are ahead of you and the pitfalls that surround your path.

• Starting from scratch: My understanding is that you are forming a new nonprofit. That’s fantastic. You want to treat this as a startup. You want little bureaucracy in the beginning. See notes on being agile and iterative. Launching a site and being iterative, Eliminating the fear of being open and iterative, growing a community and being iterative.

• Build something new: You could very easily duplicate the SF Chronicle. We’d be a “two-paper” town again. But that would not accomplish anything in the long run. You’d have a failing business model. You’d be better off just donating 5 million to NPR, KQED or some other existing nonprofit and get it over with. I don’t think that’s what you want. You are bold. Imagine the SF Chronicle with an earnest citizen journalism effort to enhance their reporting. You can build that from the ground up. ProPublica had the wisdom to hire my friend and colleague Amanda Michel to tackle distributed reporting efforts. I suggest you do the same here on the West coast. Don’t be a flat news organization – by dynamic.

• Hire new blood: The advice of old white men is great, but not as relevant as you might think. You want to make sure to be as diverse as the Bay Area itself in race, gender and age. Also: Hire people that think web first. Don’t just scoop up laid off newspaper reporters looking for a life line. So far, I think you are hiring a good and diverse core – keep it up!

• If you do Fundraising: From what I understand you are going to do community fundraising. Hey, I know all about that space. If you ever want to do community funded reporting for projects – consider Spot.Us an ally (we will do it for you). If you are a closed organization, (which would be a pity – see advice below), you can go ahead and steal our code. You’ll get more kudos for thinking out of the box. The idea is that you should give transparency and control to the community about where their money goes. Not everyone has a spare 5 million. I have friends that might spare $5-$50 depending on what mood you catch them in – but they expect some control and transparency about that money.

• Ignore the haters: There will be some. We aren’t all perfect, so keep an open ear and let them guide you – but don’t take it personal. The news consumer is always right, but you have to develop a thick skin.

• Don’t be predatory: These are murky waters so I’ll be blunt and say what I think is on other people’s minds. A lot of smaller news organizations that have been doing good work feel a bit overlooked or stepped on. Many were contacted by your consultants and we shared our thoughts/ideas/ time receiving little or no reciprocity. I hope that is merely because there are no action items yet. In brief conversation with folks inside your now growing organization they spoke my language of “collaboration.” After all, the project is called “Bay Area News Project” and that sounds very welcoming and collaborative, almost like a coop. I tend to give the benefit of the doubt, so the only thing going against the consultants running the show is that they are outsiders to a tight knit media community. But we have open arms to anyone that reciprocates. I’m looking forward to giving the Bay Area News Project a big hug. I have detailed thoughts on news collaborations and more to share. I say this definitively: It is the future of journalism.

• Bring folks together: There is a growing grassroots media movement here in the Bay Area. Your organization could be the spark that brings us all together or the police siren that sends everyone scattering. Being the first would be a boon to your organization and the entire Bay. You have some reaching out to do.

Finally, Warren – If you are feeling generous to the media scene – why not donate $20 to a Bay Area investigation of your choice? We will even match your donation to this pitch.

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.

I met Steve in 2007 at a Personal Democracy Forum conference and he has been a fantastic resource for brain picking. Now that our conversation has turned to the web it is an open brain picking session. Kudos to Steve for starting it up.

The recap

Steve: A Fundraising Question about Spot.Us

“the question, I think, is whether and how folks will shift their loyalty from the project to the organization (there’s a second question, too, which is whether this deeper level of donor loyalty matters for Spot.us-like organizations – maybe I’ll have to go have a conversation with Dave about this, huh?”

Steve: Coming up: A Conversation with Dave Cohn

This was the start of the more formal conversation between Steve and I. He laid out some questions about our approach and status.

My response to Steve: I thought I’d have fun and do it as a video.

Keywords are “transparency, immediacy, and control” (for the donor, that is).

I also ask Steve questions about whether or not Spot.Us is being naive or if we can learn a thing or two from how Mother Jones does its fundraising.

Steve’s Response to my video:

“So it’s not donor choice per se where Spot.us is innovating.

As Dave notes, it’s the possibility that interested community members connect with reporters on stories and issues they care about. Not only does that increase the possibility that people will actually pay for stuff they want, but it makes the reporting process more transparent (this was what made Chris Albritton’s Back-to-Iraq.com so damned exciting back then).”

And now for my response.

Steve actually brought something to light for me. I often say that “donating to journalism isn’t new – it is just having control over where your money goes that makes Spot.Us interesting.” In fact, I use NPR as an example all the time. They could blow me out of the water tomorrow by adding transparency to where donations go (and I would be totally fine if NPR did adopt community funded reporting).

Steve points out that what community funded reporting represents isn’t just participation through donating, it brings a new level of transparency to journalism.

Increasingly Spot.Us does reporter debriefs either mid-way or at the end of an article. We use BlogTalkRadio right now and we invite donors to get on the phone and chat with the reporter about what they are learning and digging up. There is an added service in here. The community in “community funded reporting” can get involved and as Steve notes the reporting is more transparent and accountable.

People often say that reporting for an ethnic newspaper is much more difficult than a large metro because the reporter is part of the community they are reporting on. They are more accountable. I’d say the same goes for a community funded reporter. In fact, I’ve been told as much. One reporter even printed out the list of donors and tacked it to their bulletin board as a reminder that he was responsible to a list of engaged citizens. The big step Spot.Us is taking, according to Steve, isn’t one of giving donors transparency, but it’s to make the reporting more transparent.

That sounds beautiful in a blog post, but as noted (and Steve conquers) it might be part of the reason why it hard to get other news organizations to adopt the Spot.Us model. They must be ready to put themselves out there in the open from day one. I have a million reasons why its a good idea to be transparent – but I’ll save my “pitch” for another blog post.

Let’s table that – but keep it in the back of our minds, because I’ll come back to it: “It’s hard to get news organizations to jump on board because of a cultural shift.”

Steve and I also discuss traffic. I still try and avoid traffic as a measure of success. But Steve is right in pointing out that it isn’t just a metric of success, it also measures impact. Impact is something that donors want. A good example: A recent Spot.Us story we did with AllVoices has a nice “number of views” metric. I can see that as of writing this blog post the video has received almost 5,000 views. That is a boon to donors. They want to know that the story they support is seen by others. When Spot.Us did a story with the Oakland Tribune, fundraising was easier because people knew the editorial would be tight and that the finished story would get distribution.

Raising traffic, however, is a beast in itself. One I don’t want to get locked into. Growing traffic can be self-defeating and from my Digg days I know how ugly and distracting it can be. I want to focus on making good journalism happen.

That’s why Spot.Us is also a platform that is designed to engage with partnering news organizations like Mother Jones, Center for Investigative Reporting, San Francisco Chronicle and others (The new Pocantico Watchdogs have me salivating).

In truth this goes back to Jeff Jarvis‘ saying: “do what you do best and link to the rest.” It goes for covering topics on the web but I also think it needs to be applied in how we run Spot.Us.

What we do best:

• Create tools for fundraising of journalism projects via Community Funded reporting.
• Do our own outreach on behalf of journalism projects.
• Create a sense of community around journalism projects and expose the sausage making to those who are interested.

What news organizations do best:

• The editorial for journalism projects
• The distribution of journalism projects
• Spread word within their own communities about how to get engaged.

I think some startups try to recreate the entire media sphere. That’s a mistake – one that Spot.Us has been cornered into from time to time (and will probably happen again) whenever we don’t have a partnering organization to share the load. Hence the irony of the situation above: What we do best requires a cultural shift and that’s why it is slow to find partnering news organizations when actually partnering with us is as quick as clicking a button.

Steve suggests another hire, somebody who can manage our relationships with other news organizations. I wouldn’t be against another hire at all but we probably won’t for budgetary reasons.

Instead I want to build out the platform so that these partnerships can be more lightweight. Right now it is confusing for news organizations to know all the different ways they can partner with us. Increasingly that is a part of the biz/dev plan that we are working on that I think will be crucial.

It still goes back to the question: Are we a news organization or a platform?

I think we have to be a bit of both without falling into the trap described earlier of trying to recreate the entire media sphere. So what parts of Spot.Us are a news organization and what parts are a platform serving news organizations as a main customer?

That is something we are still figuring out. It is where we start to look a bit more like a nonprofit mediabistro. A community for reporters and news organizations to meet and work together – but they are doing so in public and that way we can bring community funding into the mix.

As for Steve’s advice on traditional fundraising: A spaghetti dinner is on the way. We don’t have all the details yet but folks who donated to the City Budget Watchdog pitch are invited to a meetup on July 13th at the Grotto where we will talk about the reporting we’ve done so far and what is to come next. Afterward we will meander to 21st amendment (details to come). And if you want to come but haven’t donated….

And now – back to Steve: In my first response I asked if there was something naive about the Spot.us model. It seems that it isn’t naive – just a little “out there” still.

But Mother Jones as an organization is already somewhat “out there.” You have been pushing the boundaries of running a nonprofit news organization for some time. Politics aside – nobody can knock what you have all accomplished.

But “when life is hard you have to change.” And times are tough. Even the NY Times is re-thinking itself. So my question is: How does Mother Jones, a much larger organization than Spot.Us, approach all this? Are there plans being plotted? Moves being considered? Are things pushing on as usual? What is on your radar that I’m not aware about?

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.

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?)

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.