I'm at the Online News Association conference pre-conference, the K-Lab Fund my Media workshop (which is great, btw) and David Cohn from Spot.us is here.  He's been crunching data and he told me that Oakland Local invested $700 in funding spot.us stories in our first year--and raised $8,000 from contributors for those stories.

How cool is that?

In addition to the $4,000 we raised to fund the Mehserle trial story, we funded many other stories--
A series on the pot business
A series on public safety and the Oakland PD
A series on Oakland and Burning Man
A series on Hunger in Oakland

And  others--and we've had the pleasure of seeing OL contributors--like Reginald James--post their own pitches on spot.us, based on what they learned working with us.

So, here's to Spot.us,. which has served OL so well!  (And if you would like to help us out, we've got two pitches we are recruiting for:
Should Oakland declare bankruptcy? 
and a call for general operating/reporting support--