Fact Check Political Ads in SF

Dear SF Election Truthiness Supporters.

From the bottoms of all our hearts. Thank you!!!

You made the SF Election Truthiness Campaign a reality. We’ve received national attention from the NY Times for our innovative fundraising and kudos from local publications like the SF Weekly and SF Usual Suspects for our reporting.

If you haven’t seen the results of your donation… (may try and add one more before the day is done).

• http://wiki.spot.us/election

Finally: I’m happy to report that Spot.Us is officially launching after the election – but you can check out the site RIGHT NOW.

• http://spot.us

Go ahead and click the friendly “register” button at the top. I promise it won’t hurt. You can support a variety of journalism, just search the 6 pitches we have already.

• http://spot.us/news_items
  (note the difference between tips and pitches in our FAQ’s on the About page).

Again – thank you very very much. You probably joined this campaign because you believe that good reporting can make a difference in our democracy. Well, we agree – and we will be pushing forward every day to try and make that difference.

Sincerely
David Cohn

Hello SF Election Truthiness Supporters

Just a quick update on our progress.

We are now up to seven articles and hope to produce MORE than the original 10 we set out to report. We’ve also started scanning political flyers, leaving comments on them where we find inaccuracies.

• You can find all this reporting here: http://wiki.spot.us/election

We raised $2,500 from 74 individuals to report and fact-check political advertisements. All content is available to be republished (giving credit to the authors).

We are also fundraising for our last pre-alpha pitch before spot.us launches

• learn more here: http://wiki.spot.us/longevity

Hello all!!

Once again: We are still celebrating the HUGE victory of raising $2,500 from 74 contributors. The money is being used now to hire reporters who will fact-check political advertising for the upcoming SF election!

Today we are publishing the SECOND article in the series. It is no coincidence that we are publishing it on One Web Day. We recognize that this reporting would never have been funded without the web. So… thanks inter-tubes!!!!

The two reports we’ve already produced can be read now.

• Invasion of the Policy Pushers

• A breakdown of all 22 propositions on this year’s SF ballot

We are also very happy to announce that two print organizations have approached us about re-purposing our content for their publications. This would be mean that our reporting will be read by more people – furthering our goal of informing the local community before we hit the polls.

Moving forward!!!!!

The editorial team have had conversations in the last few days about pacing
these stories. We have been increasingly convinced that we’ve got to stay focused on our original mandate, which is to scrutinize ads. A regular schedule is less important if it means we will miss the ad deluge later on. We want to attack these ads opportunistically, as they come into our mailboxes. So please, save all your SF political fliers between now and Election Day and share them with us. Also, if you hear or see ads on broadcast, alert us, and we’ll try to hunt down copies.

Finally: Want to give even more?

• Our fourth and final pre-alpha spot.us pitch is 27% funded. We only need to find 29 more people to donate $25 each. This investigation will look into how cities in the Bay Area are planning to cope with the increase in retired people as the baby boom generation creeps into the golden years. Smart planning now could avert a public health disaster and other issues in the future.

Your donation of $25 can enable this reporting. Learn more and take action:

The Longevity Revolution
http://wiki.spot.us/longevity

Sincerely,
David Cohn

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 | Josh Wilson and Michael Stoll are playing the roll of editorial directors, but anyone can lend a hand – don’t hesitate to contact us and get involved (david@spot.us). We will also be giving this content away to any other news organizations that want to take part. We believe some radio stations and perhaps civic organizations (LOWV) will want to partake. Who knows – maybe our fact-checking will run in the SF Gate? And now for the more touching message. THANK YOU!!!!!! I was truly skeptical that we would be able to pull this off in such a short time using only a wiki, a blog and twitter. I am happy to admit that I was wrong. Many of you I know – some I have met along the way. I am honored that you have put your faith in us – not just to tackle this editorial project but also in the future of our organizations. Spot.Us, for example, is in the earliest of stages.

We don’t have a flashy website – but you decided to donate not just your time – but your money. We do not take that lightly and we will be busting our butts to make sure we deliver on this project – and also the fully launched spot.us site which will hopefully be ready in October (fingers crossed).

For more http://blog.spot.us/2008/08/27/we-did-it-sf-election-campaign-a-success/ Again: Never hesitate to contact me with questions or concerns: David@spot.us Thank you, thank you, thank you. ONWARD!!!!!! David Cohn spot.us