Results matching “cant die_ how would”

On January 12 last year GlobalPost was launched, a new international news service focused on getting the context behind the headlines, hoping to combat diminishing foreign reporting in the US. Its number of foreign correspondents is second only to the Associated Press and they are expected to provide both text and visual reports.

A year on, and the news outlet has made considerable progress in terms of covering a wide range of international stories, establishing a significant audience, and implementing a successful business model. The Editors Weblog spoke to President, CEO and co-founder Philip Balboni about his first year at the helm of this project.

Balboni was clear that he considered GlobalPost's first year a success. "It has been an extraordinary year, it has exceeded any reasonable expectations that I could have had when I started out on this journey," he said.

"To a large degree, the stories on GlobalPost are ones that you would be unlikely to find elsewhere," said Balboni. As one of GlobalPost's aims was to fill the gaps in the reporting of traditional outlets, this must be satisfying.  The news outlet has also remained true to its original stipulations: its reporting has broad geographic diversity, and consists of a wide range of types of stories and topics.

And much of this reporting has had the potential for considerable impact. Balboni highlighted a recent story on how the Taliban have been taking a cut of funds supplied by the Indiana National Guard to local Afghan contractors for development projects in Afghanistan's Khost province. The issue of the Taliban skimming American aid in Afghanistan is one to which GlobalPost has dedicated much coverage over the past few months.

Such investigative pieces are accompanied by more entertaining reporting, such as an article from Paris about how the French are rediscovering the joy of wearing berets. Correspondents also write ample blog entries.

GlobalPost adopted a relatively unique correspondent model, hiring country-based, part-time reporters who could produce one article a week. The compensation level - a monthly salary plus shares - has proven "very successful" and working for GlobalPost seems to be a popular job: the news service now has correspondents in more than fifty countries and "we have far more people who would want to work for us than we could possibly hire."

The correspondents work with regional editors based in Boston and Balboni said that so far this system has been functioning "with a remarkable degree of smoothness."

Building an audience from scratch

Developing an audience is "really more important than anything else," said Balboni. "We could have the most spectacular content in the world but if you can't build an audience for it then you can't succeed, right?"

The news outlet's highest-traffic month this year was November, when more than 750,000 people visited the site. This exceeded Balboni's goal of 600,000, set before the launch. In addition, "we are retaining more than 50% of all the visitors," he said.

The target for 2010 is to top one million unique visitors, and Balboni mentioned the company's "very sophisticated marketing strategy" aimed at audience building.

Prize partnerships

Building a brand on the web with no support from legacy media has been a considerable challenge, and GlobalPost's partnerships with other high profile brands have been very helpful in doing this, and "particularly important in the validation of GlobalPost as a brand," Balboni said. Such partnerships have helped present the outlet's content as authoritative, and often "raising our visibility is more important than any compensation we might achieve." From the beginning, GlobalPost has sought to present itself as a complement rather than a competitor to newswires and newspapers.

The partnership formed with CBS in September, for example, is a syndication deal, with CBS paying GlobalPost for help with foreign reporting. But having a broadcast news partner was also something that Balboni and his team considered a high priority in terms of brand-boosting, and such a deal "certainly goes beyond" purely syndication. He sees the recent partnership with PBS NewsHour as a "significant achievement" and mentioned that GlobalPost has upped its video production so that it might have the chance to forge other broadcast partnership. 

Compensation is obviously an important consideration, however, and syndication is one of GlobalPost's major revenue streams, the other two being advertising and subscriptions. Currently, advertising comprises about 70% of GlobalPost's income, but Balboni hopes that over time this share will fall to around 50%, with syndication and membership rising to make up the other half.

Passport to premium services

The most unusual of these revenue streams is the subscription, or membership, scheme called Passport. For $99 a year (discounted to $50 for students, academics or seniors), readers can have access to conference calls with GlobalPost reporters, the chance to suggest stories, global and country briefs and newsletters. There is also the option to commission custom research projects, something Balboni said he was "very excited about." One client, for example, has ordered a series of ten reports for the coming year. "It takes careful shepherding but it's very interesting and I think it could scale up to be a meaningful part of our Passport financial strategy," he said.

"I am very bullish on the membership aspect," Balboni said, "I think it's the hardest one but if you want to point to one thing that could be a potential salvation for quality journalism then it's that." He always wanted to encourage a subscription or membership scheme, but explained that as a new little-known media brand it would have been foolish to put up a paywall immediately.
 
Passport does not offer pure paid online content, rather additional editorial services. "My hope and my expectation is that GlobalPost will remain free and open to all but we need to find more effective ways to get all of the people who are most engaged to help support our mission," he said, specifying that GlobalPost was likely to continue to ask for, rather than to require, reader contributions. He does think, however, that it would be "entirely fair" for a news organisation to demand payment.

So far, Passport has 450 - 500 members: "just not enough," according to Balboni. He hopes to increase this by making "a strategic shift in how we market our membership" and by using some new technology starting this spring that will help the membership base and subsequent revenue to grow. Currently, visitors to the GlobalPost site can read about Passport but there is no chance to test it out first and they have to "take a leap of faith" if they want to subscribe, Balboni said.

From a purely financial standpoint, 2009 was "a decent year," especially given the global economic recession. Balboni specified that the $1 million revenue figure that was reported in November was not accurate, but described the amount as "consequential." The company's original business plan projected profitability in 2012, and Balboni thinks this is still likely.

What's next?

GlobalPost seems to have demonstrated that there is an audience for more international news and has set up a structure to cover this that works. As Balboni explained, its challenges now are to build that audience into the millions and (like almost every other news organisation) to shift its business model so that it depends less substantially on advertising.  

Portugal's newest daily newspaper, i, was launched in early May and has attracted a significant amount of attention due to its rising circulation figures and innovative approach. It recently won a design award from the Society of News Design. The Editors Weblog spoke to editor-in-chief Martim Avillez Figueiredo, managing editor for online Mónica Bello and art director Nick Mrozowski, to find out more about i's approach and the reasons behind its success.

I's circulation in August was over 16,000 copies, up from just under 11,000 in its first month, May. As a comparison, the country's top selling papers, Público and Diário de Notícias, sold 36,000 and 30,000 respectively that month. So for a new paper, i seems to be doing well. How, when the newspaper industry is struggling worldwide from falling income as readers move online and advertising rates fall, is a new newspaper seemingly thriving?

What i is doing differently

I is not structured like a traditional paper. The paper's team worked with media consultancy Innovation to come up with a new way to organise the product. "Our feeling was," said Figueiredo, who came on board at an early stage, moving from Diário Económico, "that people were not concerned about traditional sections any more. Traditionally, journalists have to fill a politics section even if there is nothing relevant going on in politics. We wanted to come up with something different." So the team came up with five key needs that they wanted the paper to address, with five key words.

• 1. Opinion is the first section of the paper, based on the key word think. No other Portuguese paper starts out with opinion.
• 2. Radar is the second, accompanied by the key word know. Figueiredo said the assumption was that readers will already know a lot from other sources, but Radar aims to offer a quick overview of everything that has happened in the past 24 hours. The section is eight pages long, and the longest article is half a page.
• 3. Zoom is the third section, connected to the key word understand. The 22-26 page section looks at between eight and 13 topics in depth, with articles taking up one to ten pages. "We deal with these subjects with a lot of care, and we use the best teams," Figueiredo said.
• 4. The fourth section is called More, linked to the key concept feel. This is where anything about people's private, cultural, social lives goes. Figueiredo explained that the team did not want to give the section a more specific name, or the content would be limited. More encompasses the fifth need that the paper wanted to address: sports, about 80% of which is focused on football - "this is very important in Portugal," Figueiredo said.

Design...

Nick Mrozowski, i's American art director, said that "I think the overriding concept, not just in the design but in the newspaper as a whole, is that we want to try to set out to produce a magazine every day." The 56- to 64-page paper is tabloid size and stapled, so looks as much like a magazine as a newspaper.

A huge amount of work goes into designing the paper every day. At first, Mrozowski explained, the idea was that the paper would have a template that would leave some pages fixed each time, meaning that some pages would require no design work on a daily basis and that editors would simply put their content into the pre-designed format. "But from day one that strategy fell apart," he said. "We realised that the sort of paper we were making had a lot of very specialised content and each page would have to be custom-made to the needs of a reporter or editor."

"From a design perspective it's a little intense," Mrozowski said. The design team are challenged to find magazine-quality visual solutions every day. For example, unlike most daily newspapers, i strives to include high quality portrait photography rather than just that for events, which means finding the time to sit down with sources. The paper also has a lot of illustration, something which many newspapers have been cutting back on in recent months, Mrozowski pointed out. "I think people notice this," he said. "You can't go a day reading i without coming across at least one commissioned illustration, rather than just back art."

I has a team design team of seven, two infographic artists and a group of photographers. This visual team is "like one unit," Mrozowsi stressed. "We all sit at one big arching table, so it's very easy to communicate."

Despite the strong focus on the visual side of the paper, Mrozowski stressed that this is never at the expense of the content. He was trained as a journalist as well as a designer, so "I've always worked in newspapers with a journalistic eye." And he makes sure that his design team also understand that "the design should come from the content."  He clarified, "it's not enough to design a page, you have to know what's going on it, what type of photo is going to be there and how it should best be played." The designers and editors therefore work very closely together, requiring the design team to have a journalistic understanding of each page that they work on.

Not just print...

I also has an increasingly significant web presence at www.ionline.pt: online editor-in-chief Mónica Bello said that the site recently passed 900,000 uniques per month. The paper's print and online operations are broadly integrated: journalists write for both platforms. "It's a work in progress," said Bello, "it's getting better and better all the time." Two editors are just focused on the website, and many journalists work on breaking news online for a few hours and then move on to writing for the paper.  40% of content from the paper also goes online, explained Figueiredo, with the other 60% being exclusive to the print product.

I's website is an aggregator as well as displaying original content. Figueiredo described how the paper is happy to link to competitors' content, and how aim is that people come to I as a base for their news exploration. "We want to make sure that people on Facebook and Twitter are using i as their main information source," he said, adding that i has a presence on many social networks. The paper has, in effect, six different homepages online. One is a portal of general news, one is focused on Portuguese political news, a third is economic and financial, a fourth is world news, fifth is sports and the last is the 'good life' homepage

There seems to be a general acceptance at i of the fact that online news is not profitable, at least for the moment. "You can't make any money there," said Figueiredo, "but you have to be there in order to grow your brand." Bello said that "the print edition is of course the priority, and will be at lease for the next few years." This means that the designers do not contribute so much to the website, which has a far more fixed template compared to the paper.

The advantages of youth: potential for constant innovation

Being a new newspaper, part of a new brand, gives I the freedom to experiment and it seems that this freedom has been passed on to all the staff. Mrozowski and Bello were extremely enthusiastic about their working environment and what it allows them to do. "There's this motivating feeling," Bello said. Mrozowski said that the two senior editors, Figueiredo and André Macedo, "have imparted this feeling of accomplishing the impossible at every step... There is no cap to how big these guys will dream and it presses you to do things that you wouldn't do at another newspaper."

One of Mrozowski's favourite projects at the paper so far was for the European elections: with the help of an outside illustrator, the team produced a double page spread the night of the election depicting the politicians involved as fish in the ocean, with their position in the water showing how well they had done. "It worked out beautifully, and speaks to this ambition that we have," Mrozowski commented. "It's something that I don't think another newspaper would try."

"We told them that they have the responsibility to be innovative because they don't have a set newspaper in which they have to fill the gaps, rather it is a newspaper that they have to create everyday in order to focus on the real issues," Figueiredo said.

The paper chose to hire not just experienced professional journalists, but decided to bring in some young people who did not necessarily have any experience in the field but who were technologically adept and very knowledgeable about social media.

So who is the audience?

I's specialised focus on politics and economics attracts educated, ambitious readers, Figueiredo said. 69% of readers have a university degree, 39% are top management. What is particularly exciting, he added, is that 22% of i's readers had not been regular newspaper buyers before. A key target audience, "that we are still learning to deal with," is aged between 23 and 29: they have a university degree, they have started their professional careers and have ambition, they are unmarried, they travel frequently and have a full social and cultural life, Figueiredo explained. "And they want to know what's going on. We have been dedicated to studying this new audience that nobody else has."

Why do they like it?

According to Figueiredo, "we've created a product that goes directly to the way they think and interact with news." Most of these readers are well informed via other media and already know a lot about what's going on, but they look to i to "help organise all the mixed and disparate information that they have to deal with." He believes that the in-depth articles on politics and economics, providing essential background to current issues, are one of the main reasons why people like the paper. The sports section is "very creative," unlike those in most newspapers, Figueiredo added. He does not think that the rest of the More section is a key motivation for buyers to choose i specifically, pointing out that one of the paper's competitors, Público, was very strong on culture.

Finally, he suggested that the format of the paper was particularly attractive, being small and stapled means that "people can read it anywhere," even on the beach. Lisbon is not a major commuter city, however, meaning that this audience, crucial to the success of many papers in many countries, does not exist.

What's next?

The i staff seemed excited about the paper's future. Mrozowski plans to further improve the work of his design team, to take it "to the next level." The team has mastered the basics, he feels, and is now "going to start focusing on certain areas of the paper one at a time and try to make them better so that we are at the highest level."

Bello said that one of her hopes for the website is to expand readership outside of Portugal. Currently 80-90% of traffic comes from within Portugal, the largest percentage of the remainder coming from Brazil. She would like to reach Portuguese immigrant communities around the rest of the world.

Figueiredo intends to work on strengthening the paper's brand, to "create a fantastic dynamic around the brand." Distribution of the paper is something that Figueiredo said i was hoping to improve. "It's a nightmare in Portugal," he explained, "but we are trying to come up with some more good ideas in order to be very efficient in terms of distribution."

I's shareholders have given it five years to break even financially. In a time of falling profits, when many papers are making huge losses, this is a significant challenge for a new newspaper. However, i does seem to be off to a pretty good start. The decision to move away from the traditional structure of a newspaper and provide something different definitely makes sense, as does embracing creativity and innovative thinking in the workplace. The paper has made inroads with a young, successful demographic that would often be attracted by online news rather than print, and reaching about half of the circulation of the major daily papers in a few months is impressive. However, it remains to be seen whether i can be successful over a longer period, and if it can indeed become profitable.

If i does succeed, will others follow it down the path of innovation?

To see what i's first day was like, watch:
 

Mainstream media sources tend to report on stories an average of 2.5 hours before blogs pick them up, according to a new study by Cornell researchers. However, the top 10 sources in terms of speed of reporting were all blogs.  

To come up with this and other trends of the Internet news cycle, the researchers tracked a series of key quotations appearing on news media sites and blogs during the last three months of the 2008 US presidential election. In total, the study encompassed 1.65 million websites that produced 90 million articles between August 1 and October 31.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt's speech at the annual meeting of the Newspaper Association of America has been widely anticipated throughout the industry, as criticism of Google from newspaper publishers grows. The New York Times said the meeting "had the makings of a high-tension face-off" and more than one article described Schmidt's descent "into the lion's den;" a "battle of two Goliaths," according to FTM's Philip M. Stone. But in the end, the occasion seems to have been anticlimactic, with Schmidt giving a lengthy, uncontroversial speech followed by restrained questions.

However despite disappointment at the lack of a "face-off," what Schmidt said is worth noting, particularly his focus on future partnership opportunities. He praised the newspaper's importance in public life, and described how impressed he was that newspapers had started off strongly on the Internet, by introducing features such as blogs and reader comments. However, he continued, this innovation had tailed off, and newspapers need to act quickly to restore this if it is to get out of the trouble in which it finds itself now.

To mark the relaunch of the Editors Weblog, the World Editors Forum is running a special series entitled "Doing More with Less." The series highlights major trends that editors-in-chief are using to steer their newsrooms through the difficult economic climate. The seventh in the series takes a look at non-profit investigative journalism site VoiceOfSanDiego.org.

As newspapers make cuts to survive and concentrate their efforts, one of the first areas to suffer is the time- and resources- consuming field of investigative journalism. And that is where the VoiceOfSanDiego.org has stepped in; a non-profit, online-only publication focussing on quality investigative reporting for the San Diego area. The Editors Weblog spoke to Executive Editor Andrew Donahue and housing and economy reporter Kelly Bennett about their mission.

The Gap

"If there is one storyline that sums up why we exist, it is because investigative journalism on a very local level isn't being done." Andrew Donohue was clear about the role of VOSD: to fill the gaping hole in "in-depth analytical accountability journalism, the public service arm of a newspaper," that has emerged in recent years in other communities as well as in San Diego.
Donohue believes that "so many newspapers are cutting back to such extreme levels that there is no way that they are getting the investigative news that they deserve and need." The problem is most severe in American cities, where for many years there has been just one newspaper with something of a monopoly on providing information, so if that paper stops launching investigations, then who will take its place? Investigative journalism has a vital role to play in local societies, exposing wrongs and pushing for change. Bennett pointed out another important element to consider: its value as a deterrent against potential corruption. She sees this as a safeguard for society, it is about "developing that reputation that there are people looking, sending a message to people in power."

"If there is one storyline that sums up why we exist, it is because investigative journalism on a very local level isn't being done." 

Balancing site readability and impact

VOSD reporters are assigned to specific beats, a concept borrowed from traditional publications. Donohue explained that the VOSD journalists were constantly trying to balance the two crucial elements of their job: to keep the website lively and updated, but also to commit time to investigative reporting that can have a significant impact. Such reporting is undoubtedly time intensive if it is to be done thoroughly, which it is at VOSD. Staff are encouraged to meet with any relevant sources and to always do public records requests and fight "really hard" for documents. Bennett explained that the very nature of investigative journalism means that you never really know how a project is going to turn out, so it can be difficult to allocate appropriate resources.

Inspirational reporting

Donohue pointed out one major project, 'Redevelopment gone wrong' which has been an inspiration to him and his staff.  VOSD launched three different areas of investigation into public agency the Southeastern Economic Development Corp., and over the course of a number of years "exposed a wide range of conflicts of interest, fraud and other sorts of misbehaviour." The publication's work has led to FBI and criminal federal grand jury investigation, the board of the agency has been completely revamped and the president has been forced to resign. Donohue is proud of the depth of coverage produced, of VOSD's determination to keep sticking with the story, and of course of the impact. "It can be very disheartening and very frustrating if you spend 6 months on a project and nothing actually changes," he explained. So "watching the impact of this story has been inspiring for us as journalists."

Day-to-day flexibility

VOSD has a more flexible working environment than many traditional publications.  Donohue explained that as long as reporters are "producing the quality of journalism that we require," they are free to work from the office or at home, and can choose their hours.  They have also tried to "eliminate the idea of deadlines altogether," explained Donohue: stories go up on the site when they are ready. Reporters are always free to propose their own stories, they are not necessarily assigned by editors. "We are firm believers in the idea that ideas bubble up from reporters' beats," added Donohue. "I would be a fool if I thought that I knew more than my reporters about their beats"

Staff: traditional experience and new blood

VOSD's eleven staff are a mixture of experienced journalists who have worked in newspapers for many years, and people fresh out of college who have never reported full time before.  Donohue explained that both "offer really valuable perspectives," although those who had been at traditional newspapers longer found it harder to adapt to work at VOSD.  "It's fascinating to watch" the process, Donohue commented. Bennett described how staff often discuss the "rules" of traditional newspapers and decide which ones they should follow.

Non-profit allows for total focus on story impact

Both Donohue and Bennett were very positive about the advantages offered by VOSD's non-profit status. Most crucial is the simple fact that they do not have to make anyone any money; rather just make enough to support the organisation.  This means, as Donohue explained, that "you measure success differently." Papers which are desperately seeking every hit they can get on their website risk cheapening their news, or moving away from their core focus. "We know what we could put on our site to get more hits," stressed Donohue, "but it would lessen the impact of our stories." The unique aspect of a non-profit, Donohue explained, is that "ultimately our success is judged by the impact of our stories: What have our stories done?" And this impact, evidently, is what is most important to investigative journalism. Bennett added that for her, "there has been some major value in being able to tell people that you are writing the story independently. For me the non-profit, independent aspect of VOSD has been part of the justification for reporting the way I do."

"Ultimately as non-profit our success is judged by the impact of our stories: What have our stories done?"

Donor money does not buy influence

One potential problem with privately funded non-profits is that those who fund them could try to influence the news that comes out of them.  Donohue was clear that this has not been a problem at VOSD. "We have made it very clear that your money does not buy you influence," he clarified. "We draw the lines, and as long as we draw them clearly and boldly then there aren't problems." He explained that he himself had been sceptical of donors' motives when he first started working with VOSD, but that he had quickly come to understand that investigative journalism at its heart is a "public service institution," and that many funders were large philanthropic organisations who frequently give grants to all sorts of organisations. A recent donor was the Knight Foundation; others are local foundations that work on quality of life issues, others are "prominent citizens," or members of the community who give smaller amounts. A total of 750 people have given money.  

Multimedia and reader interaction

One of the great advantages of being online-only is the potential for multimedia. As Bennett pointed out, if a newspaper promotes a multimedia package to accompany a story, there will be so many steps to take to actually access it that few readers will, while as online, it is right there.  She accompanies some stories with video, audio or slideshows when she feels it would add to them.  Her monthly feature "People at work," which looks at a San Diego resident through the lens of their job, often includes a multimedia feature.  Another benefit of working online is the possibility to interact with readers.  VOSD allows comments on its opinion pieces and opinion blogs, but not on news stories or news blogs, as Donohue believes that they should "let the news stand by itself," and they do not have sufficient resources to carry out the necessary moderation of the comments. Reporters also interact in different ways with their audience, using blog postings to solicit thoughts, ideas and comments for stories, which Donohue described as "a great source of information." A regular feature called 'The People's Reporter' is very popular. Readers can send in tips and questions and a reporter will spend a day responding on a blog, and "it has led to great discussion and some more long-term stories, Donohue explained.

Competing with traditional media?

Donohue described VOSD's relationship with local paper the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was adamant that VOSD is more than just an alternative voice to supplement the Tribune's coverage, but also not a direct competitor overall. However within VOSD's chosen field of quality of life issues, the site does compete: "we always want to have the best stories and have them first." And Donohue hopes that the people of San Diego benefit from this lack of monopoly, as "the more competition there is in the media, the better it is for everybody and the better the community is served."

Is this the future for local news?  

VOSD's coverage is firmly local, and focussed very much on quality of life issues. Donohue believes that the model works, and plans to continue along the same lines, although he sees it as one of many that will be tried in upcoming years. The non-profit model may well have to be used more: "at least until news orgs find a way to make this thing work financially, it will have to be done philanthropically." He sees a future in which publications become more specialised, and in which people look to many different sources for different types of news. Most crucial is the fact that people try to come up with new ideas and carry them out, as "the thing that has been missing from journalism and the thing that has got us to this point is a lack of innovation and lack of entrepreneurial spirit."

"One thing we've learnt is that the gap we were created to fill keeps just keeps getting bigger"

And the future for VOSD?

For VOSD, Donohue hopes to grow, and eventually become "a very robust news organization, that serves almost as the metro section of a what a daily paper used to be." Maybe it will not become huge in terms of numbers, as Donohue is aware that the current model may not necessarily support a much larger staff, and "there is something to be said for being a quick, lean and efficient organisation." But as "one thing we've learnt is that the gap we were created to fill keeps just keeps getting bigger," VOSD will strive to keep up with filling that gap, and keep looking for more gaps that the traditional media is leaving behind. It may well not be a model that works everywhere, but VOSD's commitment and success show that it can work, and should be taken seriously by communities whose newspapers have lost their public service arm.

Spot.Us is an innovative new sight that recently won funding and support from the highly respected Knight Foundation. It is garnering much attention as the concept essentially transforms the idea of community reporting and reinvigorates investigative reporting on a local level. However, would it be attracting this much support and attention if the newspaper business model weren't struggling?

The concept

Spot.Us allows anyone to send in a story idea to the site as long as it is a local issue affecting the San Francisco Bay area. Spot.Us calculate how much it would cost to investigate said story and the ideas is then "pitched" on the site, if other users of the site support the story idea then they can donate money to pay for a freelance journalist to cover it. It is then published on the site and other news organisations can publish it as well. The point being, some stories that are interesting to the public are being ignored by news organisations, this is an opportunity for the public at large to read a story that they want written about. The public becomes the editor.

Spot.Us deserves credit for coming up with an innovative way of bringing journalism back to the community and reinvigorating local investigative reporting. Furthermore, it is an original concept that has won the support of not only the Knight Foundation, but also Jeff Jarvis and other significant names in the journalism community.

Will the public pay?

While Spot.Us is undoubtedly exciting, there does appear to be some issues with the concept. For example, the organisation is currently garnering a lot of press attention and is therefore very much in the public eye, but what happens after the media attention dies down? Will people continue to visit the site: how will they maintain public interest?
 
Furthermore, it will be very difficult for Spot.Us to maintain its integrity and not be manipulated by outside groups who want certain stories investigated for their own agenda. It may be difficult for it to stop itself becoming little more than part of a lobbying machine for various interest groups.

The Editors Weblog spoke to David Cohn - the CEO and sole employee of Spot.Us - about these issues and the thinking behind his project.

EW: If newspapers were not suffering financially in the US, do you think there would still be a place in the market for an organisation such as yours?
 
DC: I do think there would be a place for an organization such as mine - but I don't think it would be as urgent. Part of what Spot.Us does is democractize the media by allowing the audience to determine the news agenda. Traditionally .001 percent of the population determined the news agenda, we called them "editors." But with Spot.Us the public can set the news agenda because now they have a freelance budget as well.

EW: Do you have any guidelines on what you will or will not investigate or write about, eg, an oil company wants you to write a piece proving that oil drilling doesn't hurt the environment?

DC: Yes: They aren't guidelines but categories that all pitches have to fall in. This was to ensure that we don't get pitches that aren't civic journalism. The categories are education, environment, city government, public health - etc.

EW: How will you maintain Spot.Us's integrity, to stop it from being used as a tool for lobby groups or marketing?

DC: We have an algorithm that required a diverse group of people to support a story or it does not make it on to our homepage as a pitch. Right now my algorithm is very simple, firstly, the site is new and I have a small pool of people visiting the site in general. As the site becomes more popular it is just a matter of tweaking the algorithm to ensure that you always have a diverse group of people.

EW: Is this something that you are aware of?

DC: It is something that I am very aware of. I would say I am concerned about it. I understand the concern and the fear...

But I am more concerned that we are going to find out that the public are just not going to donate at all, that's the fear. People think that they're going to be clambering, we will have to build bridges so that we slow them down they are going to be donating so much money towards our work. I think it is actually going to be the opposite and that we are going to have to do a lot of outreach to try and find people who would benefit and see the public good of donating to journalism.

EW: There is a lot of media attention surrounding your organisation right now, but how you are going to maintain that when, say, the interest in your organisation has died down from the media perspective. How will you maintain interest with the community?

DC: We are going to be doing some community organising. This is where it gets interesting right? So, like the San Francisco Commutative campaign that we did over the summer and we raised $2,500 from 74 different people who gave $34 each. If we were to do that again next year, the first thing I would do is go to the League of Women Voters. It's an organisation with a branch in San Francisco and say they have - I am just guessing here - 1,000 members in the bay area, they have a large group of people who would be interested in fact checking for the political adverts and I can go to the League of Women Voters and say, "Hey, can you help go and spread the word about this to." Then they spread the word to their members, and say even 30 of them thought it were a good idea and donated $25 each. That is a decent amount of money right there. That and also social networking and things like that.

EW: Are you going to try and build a relationship with the local media?

DC: Yes, definatly. If there is a pitch that a local newspaper would be interested in running, they have a vested interest in seeing community members donating towards it so they could help spread the word about the pitch.

EW: Can you explain how you monetise Spot.Us?
 
DC: The same way that Kiva.org monetizes their site. If somebody is donating $25 then all of their money goes to where they want it to go, but before they are done with the transaction we also ask that they donate 10% or $2.50 to the nonprofit organization that is Spot.Us. This extra 10% is optional. Kiva.org does the same thing and they found that something close to 90% of people will go ahead and give the extra 10% to the organization.

EW: What inspired you to set up Spot.Us?

DC: A few things. First - I was a freelance journalist for a long time and I know how hard it can be to make it as such. I wanted to create tools that enabled freelancers to do their job easier.

I was also the research assistant for a guy named Jeff Howe who was writing a book on "Crowd sourcing." I was researching for the chapter on Crowd funding and I began to learn about sites like Kiva.org and DonorsChoose.org. These are micro-finance sites for teachers or for people in third world countries. They are hugely successful. I wondered if it would be possible for journalist to also tap into the gift economy, which in America was $300,000 billion last year.

I have worked in citizen journalism in the past. I love it and strongly believe in it - but I also know the limitations of citizen journalism. I wanted to find a way that journalism could be participatory but also stretch to do some of the harder journalism that requires professionals to stick to a story for a longer period of time.

EW: Can you talk me though how you organise your staffers?
 
Spot.Us is not a newsroom. It is a platform or Internet tool. All pitches on Spot.Us are from freelance journalists in the Bay Area. They are not staff reporters for Spot.Us.

EW: How big is your team and how do you contact the editors

DC: I am the only staff person on Spot.Us. The developers and designers are contractors. All the pitches you see on Spot.Us are from independent freelance journalists - and are contractors. We assign an editor to each story - but the editor is just another journalist within our system. Again, Spot.Us is NOT a newsroom or news organization as traditionally understood. We are a platform. Just as YouTube is not a film production company, but they host video, Spot.Us is not a content producing organization, but we host the production of content.

EW: What technology is powering the platform you are using?
 
DC: The site is built with Ruby on Rails. I was thinking about using Drupal but in the end used Ruby on Rails and so far I am very happy with that decision.

The development firm is called Hashrocket. My hosting service is Engine Yard.
 

The New York Times announced the shuttering of its online subscription service, TimesSelect. The obvious question: is this the end of the paid-for online model altogether? How will the Wall Street Journal’s (WSJ) website, the Web’s largest paid-for subscription website, react? The Editors Weblog collected the insight of media analyst Philip Stone, Ali Rahnema, Corporate Development Director at the Irish Times, and Daniel Bernard, General Manager of WSJ Online.

There have been recent talks about freeing WSJ.com, just as The New York Times is also deciding whether to drop its TimesSelect service. But would this be a worthwhile business strategy for the world’s largest paid-for subscription service?

In the Newsroom Barometer, three questions revolved around editors’ views about the new challenges and opportunities for newspapers that have emerged with new forms of journalism, such as free papers, citizen journalism and online news. Far from resenting these forms, senior news executives embraced them.

In this section, John Zogby, CEO of Zogby International, and Jeff Jarvis, new media proponent and founder of Buzzmachine, comment on the results of the Newsroom Barometer. Both found that editors’ optimism and open-mindedness to new media was a clear indication that newspapers were embracing the digital revolution, yet Jarvis fears that may not be enough…

The rise and prospects of hyperlocal journalism.

Citizen journalism media and local news websites offering user-generated content influence their communities and are here to stay, according to a report released by J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism. Traditional Media companies are coming up against these citizen journalism sites so it’s imperative to understand how to set them up, the secrets to success and how they can work hand in hand with newspapers.

Dmitri Medvedev, the deputy prime minister of Russia and potential successor to president Putin, today defended the role of Gazprom, state-owned gas company, as the country's largest owner of media assets.

 

As more people play with the Internet, more learn about its features, especially self-publishing tools. These programs are not isolated to the citizen journalists, but also to artists and musicians. They now use the Internet to display their art and music bypassing the organizations that normally sign and promote them. Could this practice affect newspapers?