Spot.US: Journalism via Crowdfunding

Social media platforms have disruptively changed the environment in which big media works. It is now possible for anybody to reach out to millions, at very low-cost, on the web. We here at Techgoondu, are doing just that in this tech blog.

But the process of gathering information – arguably the core of journalism – is distinctly separate from the technology (enablers like twitter and plurk), or from the final product (like these blog pages that you read here).

Take a look at Spot.US. This recent media experiment, officially launched 10 Nov 2008, uses crowdfunding to pay professional journalists, and crowsourcing to get ideas. The video below by David Cohn, the founder of Spot.US, lays out what the project is about.

David was also founder of the now defunct Assignment Zero project, an experiment with Wired, on “open sourcing” journalism – a really interesting read. Guess we’ll have to wait and see how the Spot.US experiment unfolds.