Spot.us

I checked out David Cohn's community funded reporting site... and I am intrigued. The concept makes sense, remove the advertisers and The Man from the equation. The stories that are fully funded and viewable on the site are unique. As a reader there is something very powerful about being in control of content. The community funded approach is beyond nytimes.com logging my click stream and known what stories I want to read... if controlling the creation of a story was not desirous... do you think that Hearst and Pulitzer would have been in the business? I was mostly interested in how the writers come up with their target price tag. Hell, I'd let people click their little fingers away until the donate bar exploded. I'm being facetious. Props to Cohn. The digital age is all about innovation. After reading blog after blog about how scary and earth-shattering the switch to digital, I lose sympathy. There are other ways to succeed... I can't say that I know how to right now, but I am confident that the future isn't as gloomy as the business makes it out it be.

As an editor I feel that your sites business model must be like Cohn's. I'm not sure how successful this microphilantrophy would work if it were to compliment traditional advertising funded news.

I'm a bit unresponsive to the link/newswire article. I think I'm done with the linking idea.

I think it is a sign of hope that participants in the anthropology surveys discussed in Jim Kennedy's article are wanting stories with depth. I feel like whoever the man is in charge would prefer my generation to be content with snippets of news... just enough to get by in conversation. The 1-2-3 model makes sense... make a single story accessible via differ modes of consumption. I have such a difficult time understanding the newsrooms qualms. I think of myself mildly informed; I certainly could and should be more informed but that is a result of my own laziness. I don't find myself text links on my phone, I've never send a news video on my phone, and the day I start this whole twitter business is the day I am forced to. Is it completely necessary to adopt a journalism model to compliment the new modes of information communication? As an editor, the one case that I would see myself developing is the realm of podcast. I will make a generalization... but I think it is safe to say that a majority of Americans have some sort of mp3 player. If as a reader, I had a loyalty to a certain news site I would most certainly appreciate the mornings news reported via a podcast in the distinct news style that draws my loyalty to the news org. I guess I am as reluctant as the 55-year-old cigarette smoking editor that is perfectly content with an inkjet printer.

I am laughing to myself because I just opened the last article for this week's blogs and I believe the last sentence I wrote was about James P. Gannon.

I think an interesting business model would be to incorporate Gannon's one-man show with the microphilanthropic concept. Gannon expressed the difficulties in maintaining RappVoice alone. However, a downside.. Gannon said he had few individuals in the community willing to write for his publication. I think this model would best suit an urban setting or a larger community. Community funded reporting can be supplemented with daily news written by a small (1-2) writing staff. The issue always comes back to revenue. Ideally, I would have a community funded reporting model and a small fraction of the donation would contribute to maintaining the site (and pay my bills). Original daily reporting would also take place and the revenue from local advertisements would again mostly support the editor. I am not completely sure how linking revenue works... but the site could also link to larger local papers.