Thursday, November 12, 2009

An open source project, to pioneer “community funded reporting.”

What is Spot.Us About?

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

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

You can learn more about us at our Press Page, the FAQ's page.
http://spot.us/

NY Times story on the pacific garbage patch. It's twice the size of texas! http://bit.ly/KcJBB

Story: Dissecting the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
In the science section of the New York Times November 10th, 2009 you'll find a story from Lindsey Hoshaw on the Pacific Garbage Patch. This story was partly funded by the Spot.Us community and is credited as such.
http://spot.us/stories/252-dissecting-the-great-pacific-garbage-patch

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http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iSC_k8BSFHlGN6nbX0mpFbUaF1Tw


New York Times publishes 'crowd-funded' article
(AFP) – 1 day ago

WASHINGTON — The science section of The New York Times contained an unusual article on Tuesday. The story about a huge floating garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean was not written by a Times reporter but by a freelance journalist whose expenses were paid by hundreds of donors in an experiment in "crowd-funded" journalism.

The travel expenses for journalist Lindsey Hoshaw's trip were raised through Spot.Us, which describes itself as a "nonprofit project to pioneer 'community funded' reporting."

Spot.Us, according to its website, allows the public to "commission investigations with tax deductible donations for important and perhaps overlooked stories.

"It?s a marketplace where independent reporters, community members and news organizations can come together and collaborate," it says.

The website lists 6,000 dollars in donations for the Pacific garbage patch story from more than 100 people.

Among the listed donors are Web luminaries such as Craig Newmark, the founder of classified site Craigslist, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and others.

Spot.Us is a project of the Center for Media Change, a San
Francisco-based non-profit.

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Spot.Us has been covered and talked about by traditional news organizations like the New York Times, NPR and PBS as well as new media giants like TechCrunch and Wired. Below is a sampling which should give you sense of just how much attention Spot.Us is making for our innovative approach to funding journalism.
http://www.spot.us/pages/press/


Twitter, Internet Undermine Canada Election Rules

Twitter, Internet Undermine Canada Election Rules
As Canadians in four electoral districts spread right across the giant
country cast ballots on Monday to fill vacant seats in the House of
Commons, Elections Canada asked a newspaper to remove from its website a
story revealing initial results from one constituency where voting had
ended early. The agency did not notice reporters had been discussing the
same by-election results on the microblogging network Twitter, which is
accessible across Canada. [Reuters]

[excerpt]

By David Ljunggren

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Twitter 1, Elections Canada 0.

In this era of smartphones and the Internet, the federal elections agency
is struggling to enforce a rule that bans the general broadcasting of
voting results until all the polls have closed.

As Canadians in four electoral districts spread right across the giant
country cast ballots on Monday to fill vacant seats in the House of
Commons, Elections Canada asked a newspaper to remove from its website a
story revealing initial results from one constituency where voting had
ended early.

The agency did not notice reporters had been discussing the same
by-election results on the microblogging network Twitter, which is
accessible across Canada.

One journalist even sent a Twitter message saying "Oh dear. Have just
realized I may have been violating law because of my poor understanding of
Twitter". Elections Canada did nothing.

It is little wonder that critics use terms like absurd and archaic to
describe a provision that, in large part, comes from an era before the
Internet was born.

The rule -- part of the Canada Elections Act -- aims to prevent abuses in
the world's second largest country. Canada has six time zones, which means
results from the East start to come in while polls are still open in the
rest of the country.

To head off the chance that the majority could somehow be influenced by
early voting, media organizations are banned from nationally broadcasting
any results until the last polling station has closed.

http://ca.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idCATRE5A94XM20091110