David Cohn, winner of a Knight News Challenge prize in 2008, has just launched www.spot.us - an ‘open source project, to pioneer community funded reporting.’
The model works like this. Journalists pitch ideas for stories to the public via Cohn’s site. If they gain some interest the journalist - with Cohn’s help - turns the pitch into a longer proposal, with a budget attached. The public can then contribute to the project via the site (minimum contribution $25). Once the contributions hit the budget, the project happens.
Like most good ideas, it sounds simple. The devil, of course, is in the detail. Though Cohn has clearly thought long and hard about the detail. From making contributions tax-deductible to the proportion that any individual donor is allowed to give (to prevent people pursuing vendettas etc.).
Cohn says that when he began talking to journalists about his idea they were aghast. Given how many have been laid off since then one wonders if they now think the spot.us approach is one of the few ways they’ll get to do original investigative reporting.