Check out Spot.Us, a new website for community-funded journalism. On Spot.Us, reporters propose stories, and the community pitches in to fund them. Each story needs to reach a certain funding goal (one might even call it a tipping point) before the reporter actually starts writing the story. Spot.Us is a great way of empowering communities to promote journalism that reflects the public interest.

We’ve been following Spot.Us for quite some time at The Point – since the basic fundraising model is similar, David used The Point to fund several successful stories while Spot.Us was in its early stages of development.

For now, Spot.Us is limited to the San Francisco area – but you can always start a campaign on The Point to fund a story elsewhere.

Spot.Us is extremely well-executed, and the idea has tons of potential. So if you live in the San Francisco area, start using Spot.Us.

-Filed in Tools