Q&A: David Cohn says Spot.Us needs to scale with technology, not people

David Cohn recently expanded his community funded reporting project Spot.Us to Los Angeles. Cohn sat down with BeatBlogging.Org and discussed his plans to expand to more markets, his advice for those planning on applying to the Knight News Challenge (where the money for Spot.Us came from) and other thoughts on Spot.Us.

me: Spot.Us recently expanded. What has been the biggest challenge with expanding Spot.Us beyond the Bay Area?

David: A few things. I think the main thing is making sure that we are in a position to expand even more without partnering with an organization like USC. It’s great that we are working with them — and that we will have somebody who will play my role down south — but in the end, the site needs to be able to scale via technology, not people. Of course there will always be people involved (the reporters), but we are not a news organization. And surprisingly that is difficult for some to understand. The best way we can do that is by NOT scaling up our staff.

me: Why does technology, not staff make more sense for the Spot.Us model?

David: If we are in five cities am I going to hire five local managing editors? Especially when in those cities some pitches might have other editorial sponsors (local news orgs). In the end, we are a platform for journalism but not a journalism organization ourselves. It would be like asking why WordPress doesn’t have editors who work with all the bloggers of a certain topic. Why would Spot.Us have an editor who works with a local region? We want projects to have an editorial process — and we need to make it transparent whether or not a project has a news organization that is an editorial sponsor or if it’s a truly independent reporter — but it shouldn’t be our place to then force the independents into “our” editorial structure. It is just our place to make sure the public knows and understands that it’s an independent reporter that they would be supporting.

me: How important is USC to allowing Spot.Us to transition to a new market?

David: At this point in time — very important. My hope is that with a little more time organizations like USC will be less critical. But they provide an “in” to the journalism community. I have made inroads here in the Bay. but I have no connections in LA. It also provides some journalistic credibility that I don’t have (some people still look at Spot.Us as a cute project of a young kid).

me: Obviously, you’re going to concentrate on expanding to LA first, but have there been discussions about expanding to other markets?

David: Yes. I’m looking at lots of different cities. Somewhere in Texas, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Miami, etc. Basically major metro markets.

me: How much does the existing media landscape impact that decision? DC and New York are pretty well served, while Chicago has its two main news outlets in bankruptcy.

David: It does come to mind. For example everyone keeps asking me when I’m going to be in NY or why I’m not already. In truth, the media scene in NY is a rat race. And my goal isn’t to do national horse-race stuff. I think there is this notion that small is bad. I disagree. There is so much talk about journalists as innovative entrepreneurs but not enough about journalists as small business owner entrepreneurs. So I want to examine and make sure we aren’t going someplace that is saturated, but rather that is also a place that has potential partners and a vibrant online community.

me: You said that you aren’t looking to have a managing editor for each market and that you want the technology to scale, but do you envision hiring some more staff if you move into several new markets? If so, what would their roles be?

David: If anything, I would want to hire more tech people (programmers). After that, maybe a marketer (I have an idea for reverse advertising that I hope to alpha in a few weeks — not really sure what to call it yet or how to describe it, but it’ll be cool. If it works, we will be giving our advertising budget to the public, and we will need to start selling advertising.

me: Speaking of programmers, you just wrote a post about good, fast and cheap Web development and how you can’t have all three. What’s your advice for hiring Web developers for people applying to the Knight News Challenge?

David: if you win the Knight Challenge go for Good and Fast. Make sure you know what you are doing in that “fast” time period or you’ll ruin it. But it seems to me (and this is what I did) that I already just won the lottery. I got to play with other people’s money. So rather than try and cut corners on development, I cut corners on other things (pay for myself), and I built a site that did exactly what I wanted it to do for the launch. The phase I’m in now is more middle of the road….. but I don’t regret doing the good and fast route to start. When you look at some of the other Knight News projects Spot.Ss has done better than others (not to point fingers), and I think it is in part because I recognized I couldn’t get all three. If you try for all three, it’s like going to0 fast in a three-legged race.

me: I’ve talked to people who have received grants from various foundations and many of them don’t really get how Web development works. They are surprised by the costs and time needed. Do you have suggestions for how to get educated on Web development?

David: I totally agree. I’ve talked to a lot of the same people and that’s kinda who that post was about. If you don’t know about Web dev at all, be aware that you’ll have to make this choice: good, fast or cheap. On how to get educated: talk to as many developers as possible in as many programming languages, frameworks as possible. In the end you’ll find there is no secret technology that will meet all your needs. You should hire the developer that is best for you — not based on the technology that you heard will do it for you (Drupal Kool-Aid or Ruby-Kool-Aid, etc).

me: From an organizational perspective, how is Spot.Us doing? When your grant runs out, will Spot.Us be able to be supported?

David:: That is an excellent question. In truth — I don’t know. But that’s better than being able to say “no” without a doubt I like to joke that “considering all the things that could go wrong — we are doing fantastic.” No group with an axe to grind has taken over nonprofit media with this method As you said, the problem is actually the opposite; it’s hard to get the public to see a value and donate to journalism. But I’m fighting the good fight and I still make a promise to report back everything I learn as honestly and openly as I can.

me: Has the economy had an impact on Spot.Us?

David: Hard to know. We launched in November of 2008. The economy blast happened in November of 2008. Didn’t really get to experience too much before that. If I were a betting man — I’d say yes. But there is no way to prove that.

me: Switching from Spot.Us to the News Challenge, what advice would you give people applying this year?

David: Be bold…… Make sure you focus on the three things Knight is looking for: 1. local (so many that apply are not local) 2. digital innovation 3. Open source. Other than those three restrictions — go with your craziest ideas.

In fact, I argue the crazier the better.

Congratulations David Cohn for launching Spot.Us

On behalf of BeatBlogging.Org, we’d like to congratulate David Cohn for launching his new community-funded journalism project, Spot.Us.

David was the original editor of BeatBlogging.Org, and without him this project wouldn’t be where it is today. While we were sad to see David go, he moved on for a good reason. He received a generous grant from the Knight Foundation to tackle a new kind of journalism.

His pioneering project will help journalism find new ways to fund itself. Funding is the key issue facing journalism right now. Here is how the about page of Spot.Us describes the project.

Spot.Us is a nonprofit project of the Center for Media Change. We are an open source project, to pioneer “community funded reporting.” Through Spot.Us the public can commission journalists to do investigations on important and perhaps overlooked stories. All donations are tax deductible and if a news organization buys exclusive rights to the content, your donation will be reimbursed. Otherwise, all content is made available to all through a Creative Commons license. It’s a marketplace where independent reporters, community members and news organizations can come together and collaborate.

We wish David the best of luck, and we hope that Spot.Us is a tremendous success.