The Harbinger


New models of reporting

November 2nd, 2009

Here are two interesting new forms of “collaborative” reporting, based on entirely new internet funding models: www.spot.us and www.demandmedia.com

Spot.us is a non-profit based in California which makes use of “crowdfunding” or “community funding - asking the public to make contributions to enable freelancers to undertake investigative reporting. They pitch a story on their site and tell you how much they need to do it. You hit a button to make what can be a very modest donation and the site tells you how much more they need to raise to go after the story.

If they sell the story, you get refunded.

Essentially, it allow you to commission your own reporter and influence what they cover (not how they cover it). “It’s a marketplace where independent reporters, community members and news organizations can come together and collaborate,” according to their site.

It is the product of the Centre for Media Change in San Francisco. “Our mission is to make sure that journalism survives the death of so many of its institutions,” says founder David Cohn.

Their stories are very local. On today’s front page, they say they need just $75 more to investigative the quality of school food in Oaklands. The story pitch tells you the benefit of the story, the deliverables (1500 words, a few photos, a short audio and a “Take Action” sidebar), and the journalist’s credentials.

Update: now they say they are fully funded!

Also on the page is a pitch for coverage of Bay Area courts, which says they have raised $1 000 in matching foundation funds, and a report on the delays and over-runs in building the new Bay Bridge.

Potential problem: could companies throw in money for their rivals to be investigated, or politicians use it to throw mud at others?

Demandmedia.com is a commercial venture which claims to have raised $350-m to fund its idea. It describes itself as “the leader in distributed social media”.

The look at what search combinations are in demand and then generate articles around that. They get freelancers to produce it, paying them $15 to generate it quickly and $2.50 to run it past a copy editor, and then post it on YouTube. They are the single biggest copy producer for YouTube, where their “How to” videos have generated over a billion (yes, with a b!) viewings.

Their revenue comes from advertising alongside their material.

It is a fascinating model: using high technology to discern what people are looking for and give it to them quickly and cheaply.

Entry Filed under: Anton Harber, Journalism, Online

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Anton Harber: Media

Anton Harber

Professor Anton Harber directs the Journalism and Media Studies Programme at Wits University. He is former editor of the Mail & Guardian.
Full bio

Daily newspaper sales, South Africa
(Ave sales Jul-Dec)
1960 - 681 053 (Population 17,3m)
1970 - 723 566 (22m)
1980 - 803 229 (27,5m)
1990 - 1 214 396 (35,2m)
2000 - 1 117 886 (44m)
2006 - 1 600 000 (47,3m)
2011 - 1 310 000 (49m)

(Sources: ABC and nationmaster.com)

“It was pure political theatre. The excited room was filled with government officials, government consultants, quasi-government agencies, politicians and pupils from government schools. As if on cue, the room rang with applause as one education victory after another was claimed. This was, after all, the annual drama in which the minister of basic education appears on stage to announce the Grade 12 National Senior Certificate (NSC) results …” - Educationist Jonathan Jansen, one of the few with the credibility to look critically at this “celebratory orgy of mediocrity”.

“The (Incwala) ceremony is cloaked in secrecy and marks the (Swaziland) king’s return to public life after a period of withdrawal and spiritual contemplation. Among its highlights is a symbolic demonstration by the king of his power and dominance in a process involving his penetration of a black bull … But last year’s selected bull, according to a recent account from a whistle-blowing Incwala initiate, objected strongly, and threw off Africa’s last absolute monarch.” - Some surprises in this (un-bylined) account of Swaziland politics in Southern African Report

“When the Great Zucchini arrived that Saturday morning, Don had no idea who he was. Frankly, he didn’t look like a great anything. He looked like a house painter, Don thought, with some justification. He wears no costume. He was in painter’s pants, a coffee-stained shirt and a two-day growth of beard. He toted his beat-up props in beat-up steamer trunks, with ripped faux leather and broken hinges hanging askew.” - A classic of magazine profiling, by Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post.

Diepsloot (Jonathan Ball, 2011)

Diesploot: Of Frogs and Fractals, a public lecture at the University of Johannesburg, 4 August 2011

Troublemakers - The Best of South Africa's Investigative JournalismTroublemakers - The Best of South Africa’s Investigative Journalism (Jacana, 2101), edited by Anton Harber and Margaret Renn

Introduction - The Troublemakers: An account of the rise of a new wave of investigative journalism in South Africa.


What is Left Unsaid: Reporting the South African HIV Epidemic, edited by Kristin Palitza, Natalie Ridgard, Helen Struthers and Anton Harber (Fanele, 2010)

Reflections on Journalism in the Transition to Democracy - Ethics & International Affairs 18, no. 3 (2004).

Journalism in the Age of the Market
- Harold Wolpe Memorial Lecture, Centre for Civil Society, University of KZN, Aug 2002

The Untimely Death of SA’s Finest Daily - Sunday Times, May 2005

“Two Newspapers, Two Nations? The Media and the Xenophobic Violence” from Go Home or Die Here, edited by Shireen Hassim Tawana Kupe and Eric Worby (WUP, 2008)

Remarks at Goedgedacht Forum, October 2008

The rise of social network journalism - From The 2009 Flux Trend Review (Macmillan, 2008)

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