David Cohn's blog

Bay Bridge: Last Chance to Get a Panorama and Fund an Investigation

Submitted by David Cohn on Thu, 01/14/2010 - 23:17

 panorma logo(1)

This week McSweeney’s is doing a second print run on the San Francisco Panorama.

This was a Sunday sized broadsheet paper of over 300 pages (I still haven’t finished my copy) complete with a front page investigation on the Oakland Bay Bridge. The Bay Bridge report was completed by our friends at the San Francisco Public press and funded by over 150 small contributors at Spot.Us.

The full investigation into the Bay Bridge can be found here.

With more copies in the door the SF Public Press is making one last offer to try and reach our fundraising goal for this pitch. Currently – the amount of labor put into the story has us operating at a bit of a loss.

If anyone contributes $50 or more towards the Spot.Us pitch they’ll get a copy of the Panorama (priced at $16) andmembership to the SF Public Press for the next year. If you’ve donated $20 already – then it’s just another $30 to get a copy of the Panorama and become a Public Press member.

Fundraising will end this week, but the reporting, that will live on!

Related posts:

  1. Case Study in Collaboration: Spot.us, Public Press, and McSweeney’s
  2. An Update on the Oakland Police Investigation
  3. Prison Health and our community: A Public Health Investigation
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Fundraiser at the Writers Grotto brings cash and cachet

Submitted by David Cohn on Mon, 07/20/2009 - 13:19

By David Cohn
Spot.us (reposted from http://blog.spot.us/2009/07/15/city-budget-watchdog-mixer-moving-mountains/)

 

On Monday (7/13/09) a combination of reporters, editors, and Bay Area residents gathered at the SF Grotto to talk politics. For those curious – that looks something like this.

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It was a fantastic event. At the end of the night w reached just above 60% of our goal to raise $5,000.We still have a long way to go – but we made some good inroads. If we reach our goal of 5k by the end of August, both Spot.Us and the Public Press agree to continue our coverage and see how far we can take this ship!

We did it!!! SF election fact-checking!!!

Submitted by David Cohn on Mon, 09/01/2008 - 17:50

Dear friends,

David Cohn here from Spot.us.

I am beside myself and ecstatic to let you know that we have successfully fundraised $2,500 that will be used to hire reporters who will fact-check the political advertisements for the upcoming SF election. WE DID IT!!!!

House cleaning: The content produced will most likely run at Newsdesk.org, Public-Press.org and blog.spot.us.

Spot Us Reporting - A Collaboration With the Public Press

Submitted by David Cohn on Sun, 06/01/2008 - 20:33

A quick and belated blog post to announce that  Spot Us, a nonprofit that will pioneer "community funded reporting," will be working with the Public Press to help finance local enterprise reporting here in San Francisco.

Spot Us has received a grant from the Knight Foundation to take it from idea-to-production mode ASAP. (read more)

I've spoken with Michael Stoll about the concept. Indeed, he has been instrumental in helping me conceive of ways to design the platform to best aid and abet local enterprise reporting.

If you go to the Web site (www.spot.us) you can leave your e-mail so that you will be informed when we launch. There you can also learn more about how the project will work.

I am available to discuss the details as well. Feel free to contact me. I am particularly keen to hear from local freelance reporters. My goal is to get you paid to do what you do best: report on important issues. Michael and I are very open to collaboration -- so it isn't an affront to the Public Press at all. In fact, as I see it, and I believe Michael feels the same, Spot Us is a tool that the Public Press can use. 

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