DISQUS

Congrats!!!!

I almost feel like I remember that Tweet too.

Regardless - I hope PBS knows that they just hired the best possible person for the job. (notice the period).

Hope to visit you in D.C. - much love!!!!

You may be leaving Spot.us' geographic territory - but you will always be a friend and vice versa.

I think you are one of the best examples of a young reporter who is unafraid and ready to kick ass. So the pleasure has been all mine having you work with Spot.us in the early stage.

Good luck!!!

Check this out - the Unresume
http://unresume.pbwiki.com/

Me too!!!!!!

Lots of obstacles in the way - but the potential is still there. We will have to wait and see what happens.

Good for you Scoble - I think you should be harsh on startups. I often think there are way too many startups and it's created yet another big bubble. We need to be more grounded in silicon valley in what we are putting our energy towards.

In the end - I think Micah Baldwin (5th comment??) had it right - hub dub is useless once it's faded. Startups don't need to be anointed by you, Arrington or anybody to succeed (although I'm sure that won't hurt). What they need is to provide a new service or provide an old service in a MUCH better form.

Yes - I want to echo the last comment: There is no such thing as clean money. We've all heard the horror story of a publisher who killed a story because it would threaten advertising.

The idea for spot.us is that if the group of funders is diverse enough - then the journalist is not beholden to any one of them. Take our recently funded SF Election Truthiness Campaign: wiki.spot.us/election

It was funded by 73 different people. I'm sure some of those people have their political bias' - but because it was a diverse group the reporter was literally commissioned by the public - and is responsible only to report in as straightforward a manner as possible.

As for journalism being an unglamorous job. That might be true. Guess what - it's a job. All jobs can suck at times. Spot.Us isn't trying to turn journalism into a day at the park. We imagine that most of the pitches are going to come from recently laid-off journalists. These people know exactly how unglamorous journalism can be.

Excellent post indeed.

I'm David Cohn - the director of spot.us. We are still in the early stages and won't be ready until the fall, but wanted to thank you for interest in what we are doing. It certainly will be interesting to explore how we can pay for quality content with the model of "community funded reporting."

After we launch in full in the fall - we will find out more. IT certainly is an issue that needs to be explored and figured out.

Onward!!!!

Scoble: I'm sure you are getting sick of me coming in and - once again - mentioning the project I'm working on spot.us - but this scrapes the side of what I'm working on.

There are passionate people out there: Everyone is passionate about something: the environment, their kids school, healthcare, etc.

As news organizations dwindle - perhaps these people (who are a minority compared to those that want to watch sports) will be able to band together and share the cost of hiring a journalist to cover the issues that are important to them.

I'd love the chance to talk with you more in depth about this (show you the mock-ups for the site).

I'm hoping we will launch in October - but there are a million.5 things to do before then. It seems you are giving this area a lot of thought lately - so your input would be valuable.

Hope all is well. Keep on rocking. (feel free to send me a quick note: david at Spot dot us

Did you see the statistics on how many journos are going to the conventions?
15,000!!! Imagine how many important local stories are being missed because 15,000 reporters need to report the same angle on the same event.

Totally agree with you - it's a bit of a waste. But the problem isn't the individual reporters - they are acting as cogs in a machine. That machine (corporate) has determined that the end goal is to make money - so the least important cogs (the ones that would normally do investigative journalism) are being left behind. What stays in motion are these cogs.

Oh crap. I can't in good conscious not add this: Jeremy Toeman does rock. When he heard I was starting a nonprofit - he volunteered his time and his company's time to help me figure out my positioning, user-experience, etc.

There's no way I could afford a PR/Marketing person - and Jeremy is doing this because... well.... I think he just likes doing nice things.

This is a great post Scoble - but I think you left out an important component for any blogger: This is why you all ended up in the PR trap that you described in the beginning. And it's a situation that hasn't (and won't) change.

You are in it to make money. You can't do this for free. The things that you say you want: A lot of them are motivated by making money (having fun, yes.. but also making money).

I guess what I'm trying to say is: you can't just pass the buck to PR and blame them for creating this annoying echo-chamber (which as a reader I hate... and I'm SICK of the techmeme wheel). Bloggers are to blame - TechCrunch, Mashable and the rest..... all of them are losing my respect and continue to do so everytime I see the same article.

The reason they do it: It's a quicker easier buck. That is a motivating principle and that's why the PR gets through.

Wow - I totally forgot about that FF thread. I didn't realize Jay showed up. He is one of the advisors to Spot.Us - as I worked for him as the first hire at NewAssignment.net

Just to catch you up Robert: Spot.us has fundraised 43% for our second investigation: http://wiki.spot.us/election. All all through donations from members of the public. (http://wiki.spot.us/election).

But - we are still in a pre-alpha mode (made that term up). The site won't really be ready until October. I just decided it would be silly to sit on my hands until then and it would be smarter to just get started.

Regarding the FriendFeed discussion: I think Scott Rosenbeg, who commented right after my last remark, hit it on the nose: Now is the time for experimentation and innovation. Just like startups in every field the vast majority won't work - but the law of numbers says some of them will. Journalism is too important to just see it disappear. I don't think it will either - journalism will survive the death of its institutions - but only if digital natives make it a priority.

And I know it sounds cheezy - but part of the motivation for spot.us is so that motivated journalists such as yourself can work on stories that are important to them.

I will find a way for you to get paid to work on this story. Things are a little tight right now since Spot.Us is in the early stages, and my time is being spread thin - but I assure you this is high on my list.

Best
David

Robert
Excellent post. This is part of what I was writing about in this post, which I was hoping you'd look at and comment on: http://blog.spot.us/2008/07/29/the-blogosphere-...

Of course - I'm looking at content creators, not just tech. But in that world right now you need millions of eyeballs in order to monetize something and make it profitable. What I'm trying to figure out is whether or not you can get a smaller (but passionate) audience to fit the bill themselves.

I'm not sure if it can work - but it's certainly worth a shot.

Nice Gary V!!!

I had chatted with you on Seesmic not too long ago wondering what kind of charity stuff you were doing. I told you about the SF nonprofit I'm working to start up called Spot.Us

I think what you and the Vayner-nation is awesome. As I see it: You recognize that you have been given a great opportunity, using social media to basically drink wine all the time.

But instead of being a jerk about it - you use spare energy to try and promote a good cause.

Rock on!!!!!

I call B.S. for many reasons. But I also think that Jason does point to important issues about the blogosphere.

Totally agree.

Kevin
Excellent video. Watching it now. You rock.

Overall I understand where she is coming from - it would totally suck: But she works for Pownce. She needed to be more upfront about her role at Pownce before she could outright attack twitter. I'm not saying she is disingenuous, just that it is a fact that can't be ignored.

Also check out NewsTrust.net - where I am a contributing editor. We've been in the game for a bit now and are trying to tackle the same issue as newscred: It's a nonprofit trying to figure out how a community can rank the news not based on popularity but on quality.

http://www.NewsTrust.net

I am another winner of the Knight News Challenge grant and when they lined the winners up to take pictures I was standing behind Tim, who was very conscious of the fact that he was taller than me - so he started crouching down so the audience could see me.

It was crazy. Before tonight I felt like Sir Tim Berners Lee was a wikipedia page. But he was very human and considerate.

Chris
I am a contributing editor at a non-profit social news site called NewsTrust.net. It's like Digg, except where "digg" is vauge - ranking a story on newstrust is all about whether or not you think the information is of high quality or not.

Would love you to check it out and give some feedback on where it might miss the spot on what you are picturing in your head.

As a previous commenter noted: This is an important question - how can you filter signal from noise. This is especially true when it comes to news/journalism - how can you filter good information from bad information.

Nigel
Funny -- the tagline to my blog is "jake of all trades, master of none" -- I use it to be fascitious of course.

Bottom line: Journalists, whether they use video, audio, php or whatever are always doing one thing: exchanging information by telling stories.

While Megan is right to point me out as being on one side of the debate -- in the end, if a journalist can tell a story with code -- they should. I'm not trying to say we should hand over the narrative for database coding every day. But there are times when a story can be told better by using different tools.

The question is: can they learn those tools? If they can -- they need to keep in mind WHY they are learning those tools. If they do -- I don't think it's a matter of being a jake of all trades, master of none -- they are a jake of all tools -- and they use those tools effectively to tell better stories. Just my two cents.

The second day of Personal Democracy Forum was an unconfernece. Wish you had been there.

You were hillarious in your panel by the way.

Wow. Great post Martin. I particularly like your thoughts on the role that social bookmarking sites will play (those people become trusted sources of under-reported news) and the future of networked journalism.

But overall -- this hits it right on the head. The debate is not only over. In many ways it never existed: "Blogs are just a publishing technology, which can be used for distributing any type of content, including journalism. Some bloggers are journalists..."