I was recently interviewed by Tanja Aitamurto, a journalist and researcher from Finland who’s studying Spot.Us as a case study in new forms of journalism. For those of you unfamiliar, Spot.Us is a journalism startup pioneering “community-funded reporting” in the Bay Area. Basically, freelance journalists (or the organization) will pitch stories on the Spot.Us website and tap the public as well as news organizations for micro-donations to fund projects and pay reporters. Raising money through donations from the public is also known as “crowd funding,” and Spot.Us is experimenting with …

My networking attempts seemed to have paid off a few weeks ago because I just became the new “Resident Blogger” for Spot.Us, the Bay Area community-funded journalism project I mentioned in my most recent post.
It’s an unpaid internship; we just gave it a new name, but it’s a job that I sought out for the mutually-beneficial potential it has for both me and the organization. In general, I have mixed feelings about internships. I’ve had only one that I think helped me, and I’ve heard of far too many that …

I recently moved to Northern California, among other reasons, to focus on journalism. Most people think I’m crazy for quitting a perfectly good (although temporary) job while millions are getting laid off to try my hand at arguably the most unstable profession in recent history– journalism. Thinking logically about these facts, most people are probably right. I am crazy. But, out of some strange compulsion perhaps, I feel like I’m right where I need to be: twenty-two years old, ambitious, living in the Bay Area amid a digital revolution.
That feeling was enhanced by a …