David Cohn served journalism by developing a crowdfunding model

David Cohn

David Cohn has decided to leave Spot.us, the crowdfunding project he launched in 2008.

I am blogging this from a conference room of the American Society of News Editors convention (a group that would really benefit from Dave’s presence and membership). I don’t have time to blog at length, but I will say this:

• I think Spot.us might be the best community engagement startup I’ve seen in journalism. Without question, it’s one of the best.
• Journalism needs people like Dave who combine digital savvy and journalism ethics with a commitment to quality journalism. I can’t wait to see what he does next.
• Dave was a guest speaker by Skype with my American University entrepreneurial journalism class last year. He was generous with his time and provided both useful insight and inspiration to the students.
• Every time I have crossed paths with Dave at News Foo, the Reynolds Journalism Institute and digitally, I feel smarter and uplifted because of sharing his creativity, insight and energy.
• I enjoyed our “Generations in the desert” blog exchange in 2010. Dave is one of the reasons I am optimistic that his generation of journalists will serve our nation and our communities in outstanding ways.

I can’t wait to watch the next chapter of his career unfold.

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Another TBD lesson: Transparency is the best approach in good times and bad

A series of tweets last night reminded me of a lesson I should have included when I blogged last month about lessons from my TBD experience.

David Cohn tweeted a link to a Noah Davis story about AOL’s Seed being pretty much defunct. I retweeted with my own comment, without a great deal of thought or analysis.

Transparency is much better than slow, silent decline. RT @Digidave: I'm reading: AOL's Seed Is 'Defunct' bit.ly/mWqZ6l—
Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) September 30, 2011

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My blogging themes for 2010: job change, Twitter, business models …

Reviewing 2010 on this blog:

My job change to TBD was a major theme of the year here. My most-popular post of 2010 shared tips on job-hunting, from my own experience finding a new job and hiring the community engagement staff at TBD. That’s my second most-read post in two-plus years writing this blog. Other posts among the year’s leaders dealt with my job change as well: Pursuing a new opportunity in Washington, Wanted: vision for community engagement and Our community engagement team is taking shape. Another post relating to the job change took a longer view, discussing how I have twice redirected and rejuvenated my career. I also told how TBD’s launch prompted my first foray into public relations and brought back memories of an earlier launch. I explained why we need a director of community engagement, even though engagement should be everyone’s job. I have blogged as well for TBD, writing about our commitment to accuracy and transparency, and about why and how we chose TBD as our name.

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News Foo Camp: Not fully open, but certainly not secret

I tweet a lot from journalism events. I think I can say that few people tweet as much about journalism as I do. I didn’t tweet much from News Foo Camp last weekend.

But other campers and I tweeted enough that our tweeps wanted more.

1. 
   howardowens It’s easier to find out what Hilary Clinton said about some third level diplomat from China than what #newsfoo is. 06 Dec 2010 from web

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Generations in the Desert: A response from one who’s wandering

My friend Sree Sreenivasan made me cringe when he referred to me as a “digital media expert” in his review of TBD‘s launch.

The truth is that I’m still fumbling around in TBD’s content management system. The digital natives I work with could sit through one or two sessions of CMS training and take off in a sprint. I need time to stumble around, make mistakes, ask questions, have someone show me how to do something a second or third time. But when I received CMS training, I was busy preparing for the launch and our previews for the news media (blog post on that experience coming soon). I didn’t have much time for practicing what I’d just learned. And my colleagues were so busy testing the CMS and fixing bugs that I didn’t want to slow them down to answer the old guy’s questions. Some expert, huh?

The reason I am confessing how old I feel at times in my youthful newsroom instead of boasting about how these whippersnappers help keep me young (thankfully, they often do) is that one of the brightest young whippersnappers in journalism has just written one of the smartest things I’ve seen about the generational divide in the news business. Before you finish reading this, read Generations in the Desert by DigiDave (David Cohn). This is a response to Dave, so this will make more sense if you read him first, even though I will quote a long passage:

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