Web site arranges funding for freelancers

Web entrepreneur David Cohn stands in his home office in San Francisco, Calif., on Tuesday, Mar. 10, 2009. Cohn received a Knight Foundation grant to launch Spot.us, a website where journalists can pitch stories to the public and solicit funding for them. less Web entrepreneur David Cohn stands in his home office in San Francisco, Calif., on Tuesday, Mar. 10, 2009. Cohn received a Knight Foundation grant to launch Spot.us, a website where journalists can pitch ... more Photo: Kim Komenich, The Chronicle Photo: Kim Komenich, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Web site arranges funding for freelancers 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

As a young reporter in New York City, hustling for work after getting a 2007 master's degree in journalism from Columbia University, David Cohn was often frustrated with the publishing industry.

"Freelancing is such an antiquated system," says Cohn, 26, sitting in his Mission District studio apartment, which doubles as an office for his 5-month-old journalism startup, Spot.Us. In thinking about how to make the editorial model more "dynamic," Cohn circled around one idea: pitching to the public, rather than to publishers.

"Traditionally .001 percent of the population gets to set the news agenda, and they were called editors. They were the ones with freelance budgets, they could hire people and tell them what was important to cover.

"What I'm trying to do is increase the number of people who set the editorial agenda," Cohn says.

Armed with citizen journalism credentials after working under media mavens like New York University journalism Professor Jay Rosen, Wired magazine editor Jeff Howe and BuzzMachine blogger Jeff Jarvis, Cohn secured a $340,000, two-year grant from the Knight Foundation to start Spot.Us last spring.

On Spot.Us, reporters outline story ideas on a wide variety of topics - from the fate of public pay phones to a profile on scholar Paul Ehrlich - and the Web site's visitors can choose to fund the stories with online donations. A few clicks of a mouse, and voila: A journalist gets paid to report.

Fees vary according to the type of story and the experience of a reporter. Cohn has developed a set of guidelines - from a "quick hit," which requires donations of $150 to $350 and typically takes two weeks to report, to an investigative piece, which requires more than $1,000 in donations and takes at least two months of work.

Every story first goes through Cohn, who vets reporters and helps focus pitches.

Funded stories either go to a specific news organization - Spot.Us has partnered with the Oakland Tribune, Berkeley Daily Planet, and the nascent nonprofit newspaper the Public Press (all of whom provide editorial and financial support in exchange for the right to publish stories first) - or are posted on Spot.Us to be picked up by blogs for free.

To avoid undue influence from individuals or companies, Spot.Us allows each bidder to pay only up to 20 percent of the story's fee. Cohn admits that the 20 percent rule is arbitrary, but effective thus far. "You need a community of people to say that story is valid. That's important, because I don't want company A to fund a story on company B," he says.

Since its launch on Nov. 10, Spot.Us has helped to publish nine stories on a variety of Bay Area topics, as the Knight grant stipulates that all stories must have local focus. Eight other stories have been funded and are in development, while 10 story ideas are awaiting funding.

The response to Spot.Us has been mostly positive. James Rainey, writing in the Los Angeles Times, praised Cohn's concept but noted that "the site's platform outperforms its product."

San Francisco freelance writer Bernice Yeung contributed to Spot.Us' inaugural assignment, a fact-checking project on San Francisco ballot initiatives during the November election published in Spot.Us and the Public Press, and currently has a pitch posted on the site for a story about the impact of sick California prison inmates.

While Yeung says she is happy there is another avenue for freelancers to get their stories funded, she admits to having doubts about the efficacy of the Spot.Us model.

"There are legitimate concerns," Yeung says, noting that the difficulty of vetting journalists. "And from a logistics standpoint, if I put my pitch up, am I giving my idea away? It would be difficult for an investigative reporter to just throw the idea onto the Internet for everyone to see."

Cohn agrees Spot.Us is a work in progress. He intends to keep the site going after the grant money dries up. "I've done some back-of-the-napkin math and I'd need to take it to five or six cities for it to be sustainable," he says.

Every week, new features get added to the site. Now, for instance, reporters can blog about their ongoing reporting processes to help keep their donors informed.

And some media observers are bullish about Spot.Us' future.

"We're all pretty desperate, those of us who believe that journalism and newspapers form a balance for democracy," says Wired editor Howe. "It's an innovative model, and David sort of hit the perfect cultural moment to make it work."