Crowdfunding Journalism

Spot.Us is a San Francisco-based website set up to crowdfund journalism. This is how Spot.Us works: A journalist raises money for her or his story on the Spot.Us website. The community donates for a pitch. Often times the amounts are small. Established news organizations can buy the story and publish it, otherwise the story is published on the Spot.Us site. In politics, from the Howard Dean campaign to Obama's triumph, we have seen a radical decentralization of political funding. In journalism, crowdfunding in the Spot.Us way decentralizes the editorial power. The editorial power is traditionally held inside news organizations. The editors decide what stories the writers work on and what stories are published. In crowdfunded journalism the Spot.Us way, donors hold most of the editorial power. The pitches are filtered by Spot.Us editors following certain criteria, though. For example the pitches have to be local to Spot.Us regions. So far, only few pitches have been turned away. Basically, if the community considers the topic worth covering, they'll donate and the story will get done. The crowdfunding phenomenon is a sign of the unraveling of the old, top-down journalism production models.