LAT Finally Discovers Spot.us Calls in ‘New’ in A Headline and Wonders Why Print Media is Failing

In James Rainey‘s column he shines a light on this new thing it’s called a different model for journalism. It’s Spot.us where readers pay for stories that are pitched on the site.

Really interesting idea. That’s why FBLA interviewed it’s founder David Cohn back in November.

Rainey writes:

God and Google know the old, monopolistic print advertising model will never make a full-scale comeback. So more power to any endeavor trying to push serious journalism into a new era.

Yes, there is a “but.” To wit: The site’s platform outperforms its product. Spot.us stories simply need to be better. The four I checked out — three written and one a radio report — did not particularly engage, incite or entertain.

Did not particularly engage, incite or entertain? That could be said about a lot of publications. That’s not really the point of Spot.us. It’s a model to pay for investigative reporting. It’s a platform – like WordPress. You can’t say WordPress isn’t journalistic enough because people who use it don’t spell correctly.

That would be ridiculous.

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