I’ve seen the future. Of journalism, that is.

A group of journalists in the San Francisco Bay area have set up spot.us – a new model for the way news provision works, which they are calling ‘community funded reporting’. The project is run by the ‘Center for Media Change’, who are a ‘501(c) 3 non-profit organization that enriches our culture… by facilitating the creation, development and use of new Internet-based business models to preserve the economic and professional viability of journalism.’

The idea is that people can post ideas on the site for stories they’d like to read, and then others can pledge money to fund someone to write the article. When the total needed to fund the investigation is reached, the article is written and is licenced under Creative Commons, so that anyone is free to republish it as long as the author is credited.

At the moment, it is tightly integrated with local news provision in the Bay area, but the creators hope to be able to expand its scope in the future. The idea of non-profit news has also been taken up by Paul Steiger, former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, who set up his own version, ProPublica, in 2007. This one perhaps has slightly more international clout, being located in Manhattan and staffed by high-profile ex-editors, but I have to say I admire the integral optimism of what the San Fran lot are trying to do.

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