The post-election news stops right there! Kyle and I got together this week and somehow managed to find something to talk about besides the President-Elect. Play it here or hit the link below for these topics:
- The Christian Science Monitor will be switching over to online publication only on weekdays. How many papers will follow suit, and how soon?
- Spot.us is a brand new effort to put the financial and creative responsibility for journalism directly into the hands of the public. Good idea, or good luck?
- Wolf Blitzer hosted a meeting of the Jedi Council on election night. What did the orgy of technology really do to improve the broadcast?
- Frontier Communications plans to begin charging their Internet users per gigabyte for traffic. Will your ISP follow suit?
- Is Google’s ever-expanding size and strict policy of secrecy worth worrying about?
Once again, that intro and outro music is by Tommy Guerrero. And let me put the shout out once again for anyone to offer up an idea for a name for this show…
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Kyjab
Totally fair skepticism guys.
I’m the director of Spot.Us – and I don’t think that we can replace news organizations, that’s not the goal. We want to, as you say, fill in some spots. There is no such thing as a silver bullet… but we hope we can help. Of course – it’ll only work if the public views journalism a social good worth a small $10 tax deductible donation.
We want to support independent journalists who traditionally pitch editors – but now they can pitch the public.
There is a small editorial process: we assign a fact-checker to every story (another journalist in our system).
Whether or not Spot.Us succeeds – we MUST try. I sincerely believe that journalism plays an integral role in our local democracies – so we need to find a way to sustain it. Perhaps it’s not Spot.Us – but we have to come together to figure something out.
Rock on!!!
David Cohn
Or maybe Bogei.
Dave– thanks for the comment. It will be interesting to see (in the not-so-distant future) what the public response to spot.us will be as local news outlets continue to be gobbled up and consolidated under a corporate umbrella. We’ll definitely be watching your efforts with interest.
David – Working in traditional media, I’m definitely in the “MUST try” camp. Nothing can be off the table.
I think your greatest challenge will be finding a way to get this work into the mainstream. Spot.us can, indeed, replace some of what traditional media does, but without the megaphone of traditional media, I’m afraid quality journalism will just become part of the noise on the Internet.
There may be a solution to this, but it’s not clear yet what that is.
Your efforts are appreciated and I’ll be following them closely. Thanks for your comment.
-Kyle