Improving the Spot.Us platform and Improving the Pitch
There is no shortage of ways to improve the Spot.Us platform. Many of these features and site ideas can be found on our wiki page: “Site Development.” If you have suggestions please leave them as comments or add them to the wiki.
People that have followed Spot.Us since the beginning know I believe in staying agile and iterative. Unfortunately we haven’t been as agile and iterative as I’d like in the last four months or so, but soon we are going to hire a CTO type figure. I like to joke that I am quasi-technical, but that is the most dangerous type of technical because we try to fix things and only make them worse.
So once this person is on board they’ll have a long list of platform improvements to make. One thing that is at the top of that list is looking hard at the Pitch.
Pitches are at the heart of Spot.Us. It is what the marketplace revolves around.
Everyone should be able to create a pitch.
- Right now only “reporters” can create pitches. In the beginning this made sense but it is restrictive now. Some news organizations might want to create pitches and slot freelancers into them. That should be possible. Some community members might also be reporters and if they are serious about reporting on a topic should have that avenue open to them. That news organizations might create pitches or have their account open to various freelancers brings up aspects of how the marketplace is organized – but that is another post. “Improving the Spot.Us platform and Improving the Marketplace.”
Pitch elements
- Right now we have the bare minimum elements of a pitch which includes “describing the story, why it is important, what are the deliverables and what are the reporters qualifications.” We need more and it must be done in an aesthetic way that doesn’t scare off potential contributors. For example – we need a space where reporters can add disclosures if they have any. That a reporter needs to disclose something shouldn’t be grounds to dismiss a pitch, but for the sake of transparency we need to add that element, giving the reporter space to do so. Without it – we are doing a disservice to the reporter and the Spot.Us community. David Weinberger recently said that “transparency is the new objectivity. I tend to agree, but that means we need to enable transparency. I don’t think Spot.Us is looking for “objective” reporters. I believe objectivity is a bit of a farce. Transparency trumps objectivity.
- Laid out budget: Not all pitches will need a budget laid out – but if a reporter is asking for an exorbiant amount of money – they should have the ability to show where the funds are going.
- Media partners: Here’s where we again go into the marketplace. But essentially we need a way to better connect independent reporters and news organizations that might be their editorial sponsors. If Spot.Us is to be a marketplace we need to aknowledge that all three players are involved (the public, independent reporters and news publishers).
- Assignments: We have a space where people can “donate talent” on a pitch, but that call to action is very vague. What we need is a space where reporters can create specific assignments or areas where they need help so that the community can come and help them in a meaningful way that is organized, rather than just shooting in the dark, which is what that button does now.
- Social Media goodness: We should allow people who donate or reporters who create a pitch to easily integrate that into their social networks like Facebook, Twitter, etc. This isn’t just lip-service to social media buzzwords. From what I observe most donations to Spot.Us pitches come from somebody spreading the word about it via Twitter.
If you look at the pitch elements above all but one can be categorized under the “more transparency” label. It is as though I have a fever and the only prescription is more transparency.
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