The crowdfunded journalism site Spot.us unveiled changes to the site today based on feedback from its users and writers. Users can now easily follow updates on a reporter’s pitch and donate their time or expertise to a story, instead of just their money.
The basic premise of Spot.us stays the same: Writers post a story pitch [...]

Sooner or later — as Diane Sawyer, Jeffrey Wigand or the National Enquirer could tell you — anyone who makes a living telling the truth is going to need a good lawyer. That’s why major metro newspapers carry libel insurance policies the size of Abrams tanks. Their deductibles alone can run into seven figures.
But what [...]

San Francisco-based Spot.Us is expanding its crowdfunded journalism tools to Los Angeles, a move founder David Cohn hinted at in an interview with Zach in June. 
The expansion ushers in a refocusing for Spot.Us, as the nonprofit puts its development energy into serving as a platform rather than eyeing growth as a full-fledged news organization. Cohn [...]

Spot.Us, the non-profit experiment in journalism funded by readers, plans to expand beyond San Francisco by the end of summer, founder David Cohn tells me in the interview above. Seattle and Los Angeles are the most likely candidates for the site’s next iteration, and in the longer term, Spot.Us is looking to the east coast [...]

As we mentioned previously, it’s time for a new issue of Nieman Reports, our sister quarterly here at the Nieman Foundation. Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve given you previews of two of its stories: Joel Kramer on lessons from running MinnPost and Margaret Wolf Freivogel on her startup, the St. Louis Beacon.
The entire [...]

Greater Boston, a news program on Boston PBS station WGBH, did a piece just before Thanksgiving on community-funded journalism models, like Spot.Us, RepJ, and others. It’s a nice summary, and there’s a bit of airtime for me and friend-of-the-Lab Persephone Miel. (Plus a rare glimpse of Lab HQ! We’re still waiting to crowdsource the blank [...]

— A study claims 1.4 times as many people are reading pirated versions of publishers’ content than are reading the real thing on the original content site. That this “study” was performed by a company that claims to track down said pirates (for a fee) should make you reach for the grain-of-salt shaker.
— Do conferences [...]

When the magazine Radar announced it was shutting down last Friday, its Washington editor Ana Marie Cox was left with a seat on John McCain’s plane but no one to pay for it.
(If Cox’s name doesn’t ring an immediate bell, you probably know her as the original Wonkette, or at least as the young [...]