Comments on: Expanding on Spot.us

By: Micro-currency extrapolation - Daniel Bachhuber

Micro-currency extrapolation - Daniel Bachhuber — Wed, 20 May 2009 22:59:39 +0000

[...] Spittle has a post up on ideas for expanding Spot.Us. The skinny is to give the funding community more power over who is reporting on what stories. In [...]

By: Daniel

Daniel — Wed, 20 May 2009 22:07:53 +0000

I definitely dig the idea of opening up who actually reports on a story. Another direction Spot.us might take would be to build out the database of things the community thinks need to be reported on. Instead of just the reporters making pitches, the community is making pitches too in regards to what they think are the most important stories to be covered.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 19 May 2009 15:32:51 +0000

I agree that it might have more merit in a local environment; I was just using the example above because it was the first one that came to mind. I definitely think that there would need to be some sort of system in place so that the big name reporter didn’t get all the stories.

I also think that a certain amount of stories would have to be “guaranteed” in order to protect against a reporter being essentially fired for one column. However, if that reporter consistently is not given anything by the community then maybe there’s a reason for that.

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 19 May 2009 11:26:04 +0000

Interesting concept. I’m very much in favour of opening the news org to the community. I’m not sure that allowing them to decide would be a good move though. Firstly because expertise is expertise, you can’t buy or transfer that, no matter how you try – if a guy is used to dealing with potential kidnappers in Iraq, it’s not as simple to explain to the guy who gets voted into covering the story as explaining “if they say this, react this way”… too subtle.

Saying that, it may have merit in a more localised environment – but then, is the big name reporter going to get all the stories? Will the community be able to “fire” someone by not giving them stories after they write a controversial column?

I think it would be developmental if the news org opened up their operations by making everyone a journalist, encouraging people to write articles about their little-league team and publishing them in a specific area of the site etc… that would develop brand loyalty and thus revenue, not sure about the “make the community to commissioning editor” idea though…