It has been two weeks since the “official” launch of Spot.Us. I’m happy with its progress but I remain unsatisfied. The new media hype has been great. I’m truly honored at how much attention Spot.Us has received, the optimistic and hopeful remarks, the young journalists with questions, etc. But that will die down. With the initial hype of our launch we’ve managed to fund two different stories: “Return of the Hooverville” and “When the Longevity ...

It’s a simple principle: Journalism is a process, not a product - and that process should be participatory. That sentence describes what I have worked for throughout my journalism career. I am constantly trying to push that principle forward. It started as a freelancer for Wired.com, continued through my work at Columbia Journalism Review and freelancing for Seed Magazine. Working for Jay Rosen and Jeff Jarvis obviously pushed my career forward and gave me the ...

I found out via Lenn Witt that Ana Marie Cox, the original Wonkette is employing “community funded reporting” to finish out her political reporting for this years presidential election. As the Neiman Journalism Lab put it Cox found herself “left with a seat on John McCain’s plane but no one to pay for it.” (great Q and A with Cox about her efforts). She used her blog and twitter to raise money through small donations ...

Pixish was an interesting startup creating a marketplace for visual artists and publishers. It launched just as I first found out I was going to move forward with Spot.Us. Today Derek Powazek has announced Pixish will be closing its doors at the end of this month. Derek is an incredibly intelligent and experienced web entrepreneur, so the lessons he shares about what did and did not work should be noted. We launched too fast. I’m ...

I’m in New York this week for the second Networked Journalism Summit, something I’ve now organized twice. This year’s conference is focused on “New Business Models for News” something that is obviously very close to my heart. While here in New York I thought I’d go to my old stomping ground of Columbia’s J-school (where I’m typing right now). I visited with an old professor of mine whom I greatly respect. His vision of hard ...