The community-funded news platform Spot.Us announced this week that it has been acquired by the Public Insight Network (PIN).

Spot.Us is site that allows readers to make microdonations towards journalism stories. The site displays journalist's pitches for public interest stories as well as readers' tips and suggested assignments. Users can donate to individual projects, and when the funding target is reached, the journalist who has proposed the story is paid to write it. To preserve editorial independence, there's a limit on how much individual users can donate. The finished story is licensed under Creative Commons, and Spot.Us distributes it to as many publishing outlets as possible.

Spot.Us was launched in November 2008 by David Cohn, with the aid of $340,000 of funding from the Knight News Foundation. Its business model has developed since its launch; in May 2010 it unrolled a "community centered advertising project" which allowed users to respond to market research surveys in exchange for credit to fund stories on the site.

PIN is part of American Public Media (APM), a non-profit organisation that is the second-largest distributor of public radio programming in the US.

Like Spot.Us, PIN is a crowd-soucing platform. The site forms a community of people who have signed up to be used as journalism sources. Members of the network receive emails asking for information about stories that journalists plan to cover. They can respond with information and, with permission, their insights are used to contribute to stories. PIN also organizes public meetings and, like Spot.Us, allows members to call up and suggest issues for investigation.

The merger makes sense on a number of levels, not just because both organizations are crowd-sourcing platforms. Cohn writes in a blog post about the merger that PIN and Spot.Us "both create a media that is more responsive and responsible to the public's needs according to their own volition." He seems confident: "Combined we offer both opportunities to readers."

What's more, PIN was co-founded by Michael Skoler, a personal friend of Cohn.

Cohn is now a Ford Fellow at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He will continue in this role while remaining part of the Spot.us team.

Cohn writes that he believes Spot.Us can progress further under the direction of Joaquin Alvarado, senior vice president of digital innovation at APM. "It is high time for Spot.Us to grow wings and move beyond what any small team can accomplish," he states.

Cohn writes that Spot.Us is generating enough money to fund itself through the first year of the merger at least. He assures readers that the structure of the site will stick to the status quo: "There will be changes moving forward but we will remain an open platform that will fundraise for independent journalists and news organizations."

Sources: American Public Media, Public Insight Network, NiemanLab, David Cohn, Editors Weblog

Photo: Spot.Us founder David Cohn.