The Online Journalism Blog has an extended piece about Dave Cohn, founder of Spot.us. Dave’s idea is simple:

a journalist, a citizen, a community – pitches a subject to be investigated journalistically; the story is then open for funding, and whoever wants can contribute with a small sum; if the target amount is reached, a journalist takes the story on; finally it gets published.

So far it has worked quite well, too –

“We’ve raised 3000 dollars from about 100 donors, about an average of 33 dollars each.

“It’s like digital poetry”