Last week we received sponsorship from Mortgage Revolution and we let YOU decide how the money would be spent. It was an experiment we call “Community Centered Advertising” and it received praise from the likes of Poynter and community members.

We are at it again with a whole new campaign. By helping us refine and define this new feature we hope to find future sponsors AND we are going to reward you for helping us by giving you credits on Spot.Us that can fund the reporting of your choice.

We have some GREAT new pitches to support that cover topics like social justice, redevelopment and even animal issues in Los Angeles. Up north in the Bay and Seattle you can support coverage of the Oakland police, the UC system, and environmental topics like how green the cruise industry is. You can support any of these stories for free by following the simple steps below. Answering these questions will also help Spot.Us find future sponsors!

NOTE: If you participated in our first campaign, that’s great. You can participate in this one too. You saw how quick and easy it is – why not give it a second try and double-down!

How it works

• Step 1. Register or log in at Spot.Us (upper left hand corner).
• Step 2. Click the “Earn Credits” button in the header.
• Step 3. Take the painless survey.
• Step 4. Click submit and then browse the pitches on Spot.Us. Click “Apply Credits” – confirm you want to apply credits and bingo!
• Step 5. Feel good that you’ve helped support civic reporting. Share it with your friends!

Feedback from our first test via Poynter: “In some ways, it seems like a no-brainer: Encourage consumer engagement with advertising by giving users a stake in deciding how the revenue gets spent.”
Your feedback was also very positive: Dan Gillmor “The most innovative thing in journalism advertising in years…”

THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS!

Our first experiment in this is funded by Mortgage Revolution. (THANKS AGAIN!). Its mission is to empower loan officers and the mortgage industry by setting higher standards for transparency in lending and ethical business conduct.

INTERESTED IN BEING A SPONSOR?

We want to have more opportunities for sponsors to get their message across in exchange for letting community members support the reporting of their choice. Are you interested in being a sponsor? We have special deals for the first few organizations that commit. Contact: David@spot.us for more info.

EARN Credits on Spot.Us answering 3 quick questions -  then fund a story!

Hello Spot.Us community members. We are very excited about sharing a new feature we are calling “community centered advertising.”

Check out Spot.Us’ new button “Earn Credits.” Simply log in, take a three question survey from our sponsor and earn $5 in credits which can support the reporting of your choice. (Go directly to the survey here.

By taking this quick survey you can generate real money to support the reporting topic of your choice. And you’ll help us re-think and re-invent advertising along the way! But this offer is only good while the sponsorship dollars last! And you can only take the survey once – so choose wisely!

If you’ve ever wanted to help Spot.Us out more but couldn’t bare reaching for your wallet – now is your chance to get involved!

How it works

1. Register or log in at Spot.Us.
2. Click the “Earn Credits” button in the header.
3. Take the painless survey. Just three questions. At the end of the third question it’s OPTIONAL to leave your email address for more information (100% OPTIONAL)
4. Click submit. Then browse pitches on Spot.Us. Click “Apply Credits,” confirm you want to apply your credits and bingo!
5. Feel good that you’ve helped support civic reporting.

THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS!

Normally a news organization gets advertising dollars and the editor decides where the money goes. That’s not the case here at Spot.Us. We let the community decide. But we do have to thank our sponsors “Mortgage Revolution.” They are working to change the image of mortgage professionals – and that’s why they are giving you the chance to control your local media through Spot.Us. Mortgage Revolution has no say in where the money goes – it goes through you! So please join me in thanking Mortgage Revolution for the chance to experiment with “community centered advertising.” Let’s also wish them lots of luck in stirring a grassroots movement in the mortgage industry that upholds higher standards for transparency in lending and ethical business conduct. GO MORTGAGE REVOLUTION!

INTERESTED IN BEING A SPONSOR?

We are looking for more sponsors! Consider a survey for market research, brand or cause marketing or more (we have lots of ideas). In exchange – your sponsorship dollars will go directly to community members so they can fund the reporting of their choice (and they’ll love you for it).

Are you interested in being a sponsor? We have special deals for the first few organiations that commit. Contact: David@spot.us for more info.

Until next time.
David Cohn
Spot.Us

While Spot.Us is gaining more media attention every day for it’s innovative approach to journalism, I haven’t heard much from the people most involved in these community-funded stories—the reporters. What has their experience been like working with Spot.Us? What are their thoughts on the prospects and challenges of this new model for journalism?

As an intern and reporter for Spot.Us, I recently addressed these questions in a blog post I wrote for Meridian Collective, a cooperative for emerging journalists. Below is my commentary about the Spot.Us experience for me. What has it been like for you?

__________________________

…First, I want to make one very important disclaimer:  I’m a young reporter with little experience in the “traditional journalism” field. As such, I don’t have much to compare Spot.Us with. I also have a unique set of interests (i.e. getting my piece published in print because for some reason that still seems to matter in the job world) which a more established journalist may not worry about. I think the Spot.Us experience is different for each reporter, but here are the things I discovered along the way:

Transparency

Spot.Us was built out of founder David Cohn’s desire to pitch stories to the world and get the public more involved in journalism, rather than have the whole process occur behind closed doors between a reporter and editor. With this goal comes transparency, where every thing from pitching, to fundraising, to investigative research happens in public domain. Cohn often echoes the sentiment of author David Weinberger when he says “transparency is the new objectivity,” helping news organizations gain trust and credibility in the “age of links.”

Transparency also leads to another one of Cohn’s motos: “journalism is a process, not a product.” While media outlets have traditionally tried to cram all relevant information into one finished piece, web technology like comments and blogging  allow for continuous reporting that exposes facts and perspectives as they come to light, creating a more complete picture of a story than say one article with a limited word count can produce.

Collaboration

Another strength of the Spot.Us model is the potential for collaboration. Spot.Us strives to be a platform to connect reporters, news organizations and the public in a symbiotic relationship, where the community can help source information and fund stories they care about, the reporter can sift through facts and break down complex issues, and the news organization can score a quality investigative article with the help of public funds. While I didn’t witness a whole lot of collaboration with my story in particular, all one needs to do is look at the long list of donors and read the comment stream on the investigation into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to see Spot.Us’ potential to galvanize the public around an issue of interest.

Personal Benefits for a Young Reporter

Some of you may be thinking that transparency and collaboration are all fine and dandy, but how does Spot.Us help freelancers in today’s tough economy? First, I think it’s easier to get an “in” with Spot.Us than with a traditional media outlet. While Spot.Us still has some editorial control about pitches they pursue, the organization tries not to be exclusive and will take chances on good ideas, even if the reporter is young or their credentials are not entirely in line. Some may argue that this is a weakness, but I think it could be beneficial to employ young, ambitious reporters who are not as socialized into the conventional ways of doing things. Reporters get a foot in the door; Spot.Us gets fresh blood, and through transparency, reporters will be held accountable.

The pay’s not bad either. If you can last the time it takes to fundraise (which can be months), you will be rewarded with competitive freelance rates. It was also nice to not go through the grueling pitching process, which can mean constant rejection for young reporters. Cohn pretty much single-handedly promoted my story and used his connections to get it placed in a paper. I question whether I could have been published if I would have pitched the story on my own…

Room for Improvement

In the spirit of transparency, let me also share a few areas I think could use some improvement.

Outreach

As it stands, fundraising through Spot.Us is usually a pretty slow process only suitable for long-term investigations rather than more “news worthy” issues. There are often many communities and nonprofit organizations interested in the issues at hand, but due to limited staffing, these groups are not always taken advantage of.

News organizations are also hesitant to make partnerships with Spot.Us, possibly out of discomfort with being transparent since they’ve historically been concerned about being “scooped” or beaten to a story by a competing news organization. I think other news outlets see Spot.Us as an unnecessary middle man between the reporter and editor without seeing the added value of transparency and collaboration that Spot.Us can create. I think enhanced community organizing and education about the benefits of community-funded reporting need to take place to achieve higher levels of collaboration.

Staffing/Editorial Oversight

I think one of Spot.Us’ greatest challenges is its nonprofit status and subsequent lack of adequate staffing (due to lack of funding). While I think Cohn, with the help of Kara Andrade and others, has done an incredible job creating the organization from scratch, I think there are some limitations to virtually being a one man show.

In addition to outreach, editorial oversight is another area that should be built up. Fact-checking can be left up to “peer editors” or no one at all if a news organizations does not step in, which could compromise the accuracy of a story and the credibility of the organization.

Organizational Structure

Lastly, I think more emphasis needs to be placed on creating a more streamlined organizational structure through a defined business-development plan. It seems like stories are often tackled on a case-by-case basis in terms of fundraising, promotion, publication, and distribution rather than undergoing a consistent process from pitch to publication. I was initially wary about Spot.Us’ recent expansion to Los Angeles without all the organization ducks in a row; however, I think working with the USC Annenberg School of Journalism will be a great opportunity to bring more staff and student volunteers into the fold and hopefully help Spot.Us create a more sustainable structure that any city can replicate in the future.

________________________

These are my thoughts, but I’d be interested in hearing from the rest of you Spot.Us reporters out there. Leave us a comment about your experience with community-funded reporting or write a post yourself and email me at serena (at) spot.us.

The opportunity

The Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is intended to be an experienced professional with broad knowledge and understanding of technical implementations as well as, business considerations. A key position within Spot.Us, the CTO is responsible for the design, cultivation and implementation of all technical aspects of Spot.Us. These technical aspects will be used to facilitate collaboration between the reporters, the community and the editors as well as, to assist, guide and train the organization and its followers in web technology, the site and to act as a evangelist for features. This individual will need to be an operations research analyst allowing us to know how to allocate resources and solve resource questions.

In collaboration with other media professionals, the CTO will help to shape and form the technical direction for the entire organization and the Web site. The CTO will be an active participant in the discussion about how to shape and form crowd-sourced media from a business and technology perspective to follow the vision of Spot.Us. This person must absolutely understand the profound experience of the citizen and social media arena, where it is heading and how to use this technology to involve the community so they can better analyze the complex relationship between freelancers, news organizations and news consumers.

The position will require energy, creativity, and professionalism for the coordination of all technical efforts to align them with the needs of the community, the economical constraints, market needs and also the business considerations for the organization. The ability to lead the development, communications and outreach efforts on technology and business rules to potential funders, the community and the organization itself is central for the success of the role.

This position will report directly to David Cohn, the founder and director of Spot.Us.

Roles and responsibilities

A crucial part of the work will be to find and implement information technological tools to foster these collaboration efforts, simplify the administration and strengthen the community aspects of the site. The CTO will also be responsible for addressing any challenges concerning extending the site to multiple locations in and outside the United States. A key component of the future site of Spot.Us is a cellphone strategy for cellphone technology in and outside the U.S. and for low cost solutions.

The holder of this position will:

• Maintain, develop and strengthen the existing technology.

• Share information among media professionals in order to evangelize the organization and its vision.

• Work as a catalyst in building relationships and connections between key media and university partners around the globe.

• Assist in developing and maintain strong contacts with media professionals and technology partners who share the goals and mission of the organization.

• Stay abreast of trends and developments in Silicon Valley (and other relevant places) both in the technological and media arena of interest for crowd-funded journalism.

• Create a scalable technological base and broaden the open-source developer bas for software.

• Design, implement and document best practices for crowd-sourced media, especially on the micro-finance component.

• Help to develop metrics to measure progress and success of this program and implement technological tools to assist in its assessment.

• Provide technical support to the rest of the staff as needed.

Tasks

• Develop, design and implement new features of the web site and other supporting technological tools.

• Position Spot.Us as a pioneer from a technical perspective on crowd-funded journalism.

• Create and foster an engaged pool of open-source developers to assist in the development of the web site.

• Identify media and technology contacts and partners of interest for Spot.Us.

• Build on the entrepreneurial spirit that is the hallmark of Silicon Valley.

Qualifications

Minimum bachelor’s degree with advanced degree desirable, plus significant prior experience concerning managing programs, implementing web based solutions working with diverse backgrounds of people and on a volunteer basis. Strong communicator and strategic thinker with extensive experience managing complex and diverse issues and programs. Excellent interpersonal and communication ability as well as writing and editing skills. Profound knowledge in cellphone application especially cellphone-based solutions is required, as well as deep knowledge in media and in particular social, crowdsourced and citizen media.

The successful candidate will be a creative thinker with a proven ability to juggle multiple projects and collaborate with people of internationally and culturally diverse backgrounds. Also necessary is the ability to strategize and conceptualize the work effectively with little supervision and willingness to take on whatever tasks are required to accomplish the goals of the program. Some travel is required.

Advanced knowledge in virtual community and information technology development is necessary. Additionally strong programming skills such as  RUBY ON RAILS, HTML, CSS, PHP, Perl, Javascript, are preferred, and knowledge in InDesign, Photoshop and Microsoft Office is highly desirable.

Demonstrated ability to work collaboratively with a team of seasoned development professionals, academic leaders and faculty. Strong skills in strategic planning with the ability to integrate a wide spectrum of objectives. Ability to work both independently and collaboratively with a diverse range of colleagues, faculty, donors, volunteers and prospects in building consensus and achieving desired outcomes.

Demonstrated excellent interpersonal skills to include the ability to motivate staff, volunteers and the outside community. Ability to conceptualize, develop, implement and assess development.

If interested please email: david at spot dot us with your resume.

There has been a lot of chatter about the Spot.Us pitch on the Pacific Garbage Patch. This is in part because it is a fascinating pitch and  the reporter’s passion pours throughout the page. Perhaps attention was also merited because it has been supported by such amazing individuals. And of course we’d be remiss not to acknowledge that the NY Times has publicly considered running the finished content.

In a time when the craft of journalism is searching to find itself, anything new the “gray lady” does will turn heads.

As many know, I try to avoid the “old media vs. new media” debate. I say “I have constructive criticisms for both sides.”

Details on new media criticism: It needs to mature and blossom.
Details on old media criticism. It must learn to be agile – fail early and often.

My hat is off to the New York Times for being more agile than most. I spent an afternoon at the Times and met with three key individuals and we were off and running. That is about as lean as any startup I know.

As a result of trying something new chatter has commenced.

• Poynter: The NYTimes Considers Foundation Funding for News
• Mashable: Is Crowdfunding the Future of Journalism?
• Daily Green: Groundbreaking Investigation into the Pacific Garbage Patch
• Hoi Polloi: Civic Journalism is Coming Get Over it.
• BayNewser: Spot.Us at Work
• The New York Times: One Newspaper, Many Checkbooks
• Huffington Post: Charity or Collaboration at the Times (BuzzMachine)
• Online Journalism Blog: What wil the future of journalism be?
• Maimonidesladder: Second Great Age of Patronage
• Chronicle of Higher Education: Investigative Reporting on Demand
• PayyAttention: What if Readers Fund an Open Journalism?

But what does this all mean both for Spot.Us and for the potential future of journalism? We would never claim to have answers, but we do have theories.

Every pitch on Spot.Us is defacto a collaboration. At the very least it is between the reporter and the community of supporters.

But often news organizations get involved. Sometimes we get TWO news organizations involved. In the future – I hope we can get THREE news organizations to collaborate around a single pitch.

We are producing a custom CMS that is based around the idea that “collaboration is queen.” It is the acknowledgment that no single news organization can do everything and that it is okay to “link to the rest.” It requires a new level of transparency and honesty in our reporting.

By opening up to Spot.Us the NY Times is, perhaps, testing the water for what future partnerships and collaborations should look and feel like. Of course, I’d never speak for the Times, just giving my own observations and reflections.

For Spot.Us it is a shinning example of what is possible. Say In fact, I think we haven’t even scratched the surface of what is possibe to fundraise for journalism. Which is really to say – we haven’t figured out all the various ways that the public can get involved in journalism or how collaborations can be organized in an effecient and impactful manner. That’s the light at the end of this tunnel journalism is in. A world where reporters can freely reveal their ideas, find partnering reporters and news organizations, engage in transparent journalism (journalism as conversation perhpas) involving the public and producing content that has a positive impact on our communities.

Say that last sentence three times fast.

Yes, it is a mouthful, but that’s what we have to bite off right now.

So what does the Pacific Garbage Patch represent in all that? It is one long journey for Lindsey Hoshaw. It is one small step towards collaborative and transparent journalism that engages the public.

Spot.Us recently had its second community advisory board meeting at Tech Liminal. We experimented with making the meeting more open by inviting new interns, volunteers and people in the community, so that we could have an open discussion about setting goals. We felt it was important to get as much input into this process from different community members in order to create a conversation about the direction of Spot.us as an organization.

On the agenda: mapping out where we wanted to be in three months from now until we reach September 15, 2009. We received a lot of amazing and useful points to consider and are eternally grateful to our Advisory Board. Keep reading to learn more about what we hope to accomplish and how you can help shape our future.

Below is a quick recap of what we’ve accomplished and  the goals for the next three months, without any particular priority. We want you to help us prioritize them.

There are many ways a news organization can use Spot.Us. The Bay Area Monitor came across a Spot.Us pitch that was already in motion and put down 50 percent of the cost, became the editors and published the content first. This was a great first experiment for them, the results are here: High Speed Rail’s Funding Future.

The Bay Area Monitor, a publication of the League of Woman Voters, is using Spot.Us again – this time with a twist that I hope other organizations follow.

• They created a pitch: “The Goods on Graywater.”

• There is a fundraising goal of $400 (we are $120 shy as of writing this). This will ALL go to a freelancer.

• But there is no freelancer in place right now.

In this situation – Spot.Us is an open call for freelancers to apply for the gig!

People who donate are doing so knowing that the Bay Area Monitor will take the editorial lead. Meanwhile the Bay Area Monitor is using Spot.Us to find and tap into a new pool of freelancers. Think MediaBistro but instead of having to pay to attend a networking event and passing out business cards, you can see how much money is in the pot and what the specific writing gig is.

Hey freelancers, are you looking for some work? Check out the publication and the pitch. If it is something you’d be interested in click “I’ll Donate Talent” on the pitch itself and your contact info will be passed along to the Bay Area Monitor’s editor who is making the final hiring decision.

Hat tip to Raines Cohen who alerted us to winning a “Best of San Francisco” award from SF Weekly.

• “Best Business Model Experiment for News.”

We humbly accept. We’d like to thank our mothers, our community members (couldn’t have done it without you) and of course the big guy/girl upstairs.

On a more serious note: This is very cool. It is always nice to get recognition from other publishers. Recently the Chron gave us a nod. We should have a story out in the Oakland Tribune later this week (or early next) and more.

So what I’d really like to do is throw it back to the SF Weekly. If you are anything like the East Bay Express, you are tossing around ideas for how to make money doing journalism online.

Why not partner with Spot.Us on a story? We can fundraise for you!

• Oak Tribune took us up on it and we saved them $300 and got community engagement in one of their stories.
• The Bay Area Monitor is doing it (for the second time) and now they are using our site to find new freelancers.
• KALW has done it thrice times.

The only thing that is stopping anyone from taking advantage of Spot.Us as a potential revenue stream is themselves. More explanation on how news organizations can work with Spot.Us here. From my most critical analysis the worst thing that can happen is we don’t raise any money and instead of helping to expand your freelance budget all we do is help market some of the reporting you intend on doing anyways.

The “journalism ethic drama” of the week involves super-social-media maven Chris Brogan who was sponsored by Kmart to shop at their stores and then blog about it.

Playing the part of devil’s advocate (not fully but he points to good drawbacks) is web strategist Jeremiah Owyang (local SF resident) who says (in Twitter).

“Expect more brands to ‘buy’ bloggers and tweeters as the economy dips, this truly is cost effective marketing.”

Brogan’s response to the cries of foul is well thought out and hard to argue with. At the very least he can throw up his hands and say “hey, I was testing something out.”

I’m right there with him. I’ve been accused of journalistic ethics oddities with my idea for Spot.Us and “community funded reporting.”

The quote from the NY Times article says it best: “Critics say the idea of using crowdfunding to finance journalism raises some troubling questions. For example, if a neighborhood with an agenda pays for an article, how is that different from a tobacco company backing an article about smoking?”

To which I respond: Yes… it is VERY different if a neighborhood comes together to fund a journalist then if a company does.

Lets take Brogan’s experience as a perfect example: Imagine if it wasn’t Kmart itself that funded his shopping spree – but his readers. All Brogan needs is 50 of his readers to donate $10 each and that would be a $500 shopping spree at Kmart that Brogan could then report on. The guy has 27,000 followers on Twitter. Something tells me that even if he asked for something as selfish as this, 50 people (.001%) would respond.

If this happened his reporting would be trusted more since he is now beholden to a group of 50 individuals (his readers) than the company itself. In the end who the reporter is responsible to is EXACTLY why this ethical drama continues to rear its ugly head. By distributing the cost we can distribute who the reporter is responsible towards which means they are simply commissioned by and reporting for…. the public. Often journalists forget – that is who we are supposed to serve.

While I admit it would be hard to find 50 people to donate to Brogan’s holiday shopping spree, it is possible to find 50 people to donate towards reporting about on: if the Oakland Police department is living up to its duty to protect and serve, if the East Bay is prepared for an earthquake, etc.

These are investigations that serve a public good. Brogan can’t report on these (only because he lives in Boston) but is there a an expert East Bay blogger, podcaster, reporter who could? Do they have an audience of a few thousand? Could they ask their readers to support them for specific acts of reporting?

Seems possible to me

In the end, I support Brogan’s experimentation – but I also think Brogan and other uber-bloggers like himself need to look beyond mere sponsorship, which inevitably begs these questions, and look towards community funding.

Brogan should experiment with this. He’s seen the backlash of what happens when you take money from a single source – I’d love to see him create a pitch with a real value to his readers and see if they’ll support him to report on that.

Spot.Us has finally started publishing content!!!

You can view the four stories we’ve funded here. More are on the way. We are expecting to publish three or four more in January.

As with all things on Spot.Us at the moment – the publishing system is a 1.0, err beta, err… not 100% finished. Truth be told it is newly minted last weekend and so far, working great. I’ll describe the publishing process further down in this post, but first.

Why the title of this post? A bit crass, no?

The title is because while publishing these stories is great for Spot.us – I want to explain what is in it for you, dear reader. Depending on who you are, you have different motivating factors. This part of the post is about what is in it for news publishers. If you are a news publisher right now – you are looking for ways to stay in business and that requires making money.

Th content on Spot.Us is free to be republished anywhere. Your eyes do not betray you. This is high quality content that is free to republish. It was not free to produce, so the quality is high, but the cost for anyone to republish it is zilch. So what do you have to lose? Go ahead – Take a look at them the most you’ll lose is 20-35 seconds of your time.

If any of them seem like, echem, good reporting, then why not republish them on your.

• Blog
• Newsletter
• Website
• Newspaper
• Whatever

If these articles aren’t your cup-o-tea, stay tuned, more stories coming your way.

They can be placed alongside your own advertisements. I’ll even link to you and sing your praises, your readers will love you for giving them good content, and the story’s funders will love you for sharing the work they helped to produce. The only requirement is that you give the stories reporter name recognition and ideally state that this reporting was funded by Spot.Us

Often people here this explanation and akin Spot.us to a wire service. The analgoies are obvious except Spot.Us is…

• Local and probably more relevant to any Bay Are publishers audience then 90 percent of the crap they shovel down our throats via the A.P.
• Free to news publishers
• Not rushed copy – this is long-form journalism here.

Are you afraid of not having complete editorial control?

Most bloggers I speak with get this concept of content sharing right away. Its the news organizations, even the forward thinking ones, that seem timid.

I could write a 2,000 essay on why this is the wrong attitude, but instead I’ll just say this.

Now is not the time to be timid about doing something that will cost your organization no money to try and potentially create a new and stronger relationship with your readers.

I call this the “just go ahead and sign up for Twitter already” argument. The real question is…. why not?

How Spot.Us Publishes Content

If you are a news organization interested in Spot.Us content you’ll probably want to know how we get this content and why we claim it is “high quality” – high enough for you to even republish.

Good question.

First: All pitches on Spot.Us come from reporters who must give an explanation of their background in journalism. We call this a “profile.” Before people donate to a pitch on Spot.Us – I encourage them to look at the profile of the reporter.

There is also an argument that any pitch which raises a descent amount of money has already proved its worth (the Digg argument) – but I’ll skip that one.

The next stage is reporting. All stories on Spot.Us are reported throughly. How do I know?

• The reporter is compensated, so they have time to do the type of reporting that the story really needs.
• Imagine you are a freelance reporter and instead of being commissioned by a single editor you have 25+ members of the public who are ridding their information needs on your back. You will probably work harder then ever not to disappoint. So far, that is exactly the feedback I get from reporters.

The next stage is editing. The Spot.Us reporter turns in their content via the website to a fact-check editor that is assigned to every story. If a news organization wants – they can be that fact-check editor, all they have to do is contact me beforehand to let me know.

After the fact-check editor approves the story (or sends it back to the reporter to start the process again) it is pushed forward to Spot.Us admin.

We hold the story for 24-hours and then email anyone registered on our site as a “news organization” to let them know that this free, high quality, content will be published the next day. If any of them want first publishing rights they must refund the original donors (but they’ll get a built in audience and again could place the content next to their own advertisements to recoop that cost).

And that, my friends, is the life-cycle of a Spot.Us story.