Spot.us

Spot.Us is an American non-profit organization that aims to bring together by means of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding citizens, journalists and media companies on a virtual marketplace. It was founded by David Cohn, which for this purpose by the Knight Foundation a grant of $ 340,000 received .. The New York Times " Week in Review " portrayed the new concept in August 2008. Spot.Us is concerned mainly with projects currently in or near the headquarters in the San Francisco Bay Area. The plan is to expand to national or international level.

Concept

Reports are created from either a pitch or a tip. A pitch is the offer of a journalist, writing for a certain sum of money on a theme. A tip is the article request of a citizen on an issue. If a journalist wants to take up the subject, he is to create a pitch. Visitors can then finance a pitch with donations. Smaller reports cost a few hundred dollars, the biggest cost a few thousand dollars. The completed reports are available with a Creative Commons license. They can be read for free on the website and are used by the media free of charge. Media can achieve for a limited time the copyright for an article by donating more than 50 % of the amount.

Cooperations

Spot.us is working with partners such as the New York Times, Annenberg School of Communications, Oakland Tribune, San Francisco Magazine, Earth Iceland Journal, The Public Press.

In April 2010, was founded in Italy with spotus.it independent of spot.us organization with a similar concept. In May 2010 we launched the Australian site youcommnews, funded by the Public Interest Journalism Foundation.