Journalism Project Spot.Us Teams With USC Annenberg

September 28, 2009 9:56 AM

Spot.Us, the community funded journalism project founded less than a year ago in San Francisco, announced it is expanding to Los Angeles through a collaboration with the USC Annenberg School of Journalism.

The partnership, which will integrate Spot.Us’ innovative news delivery method with the journalism academy and strengthen ties to the local media, is made possible by additional funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, one of the original backers of the project. Among other things, the grant will fund local staff to coordinate freelancers and publications in the Los Angeles area and further site development.

“We’ve had a lot of success in the Bay Area, and we want to be a network for community journalism, not just a single-city site,” said Spot.Us founder David Cohn. “We are committed to civic journalism because that is what has been hit the hardest, and to really cover civic issues, you have to be local. The partnership with USC gives us the perfect opportunity to work in another city taking all we have learned and built in San Francisco.”

A pioneer in community funded journalism, Spot.Us is the only “crowd-sourced” Web site that focuses on local, long-form reporting. Visitors to the site may choose to donate money to support investigative reporting on an issue of their choice.

Once completed, the reports are solicited for distribution through local media outlets - if no outlet is found, the story is posted on the Spot.Us site. If wider distribution is found, the story is sold to the outlet and the donation is refunded.

By encouraging partnerships with other news organizations, the project expanded the readership of its stories beyond the site, collaborating with national publications such as The New York Times and local organizations such as the Oakland Tribune and radio station KALW.

Launched in November of 2008 after being selected a winner of the Knight Foundation’s Knight News Challenge, more than 800 people have funded more than 30 projects on Spot.Us with an average donation of just over $40. The site also has received support from local foundations.

“The Knight Foundation funded - and continues to fund - Spot.Us because it uniquely combines local investigative journalism with Web 2.0 technology,” said Gary Kebbel, journalism program director at the Knight Foundation.

Stories funded by Spot.Us cover community concerns such as environmental, budgetary and cultural issues. “Breaking the Wall of Silence” was an investigative report into the civilian oversight of police in Oakland. “A Tale of Two Zip Codes” examined diminishing anti-poverty programs in the Tenderloin neighborhood. One story, “Follow the Trash,” which detailed where a local community’s recycling goes after pick up, turned into a collaboration with San Francisco magazine.

“With traditional journalism models facing economic challenge, it’s clear that we must find new ways to support the critically important work of journalism. Spot.Us represents a new way to ensure that communities get the stories that matter most to them,” said Geneva Overholser, School of Journalism director.

TAGS: innovation, research

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