Story Exchange

Story Exchange is a PRX crowd-funding project supported by the Knight News Challenge and a collaboration among PRX, Spot.us and Louisville Public Media.

Working from the Spot.us crowd-funding model, PRX is focusing on unleashing station and local audience creativity to identify stories of local importance and then giving listeners a way to support and insure those stories get told. PRX is working with Louisville Public Media and will be expanding the Story Exchange project to other communities and stations in 2011.

The Spot.us model is very simple: a reporter, producer or writer proposes a story and makes a pitch. Each pitch is directed through a website to an audience and each pitch carries with it a direct appeal to raise a certain amount of money. When the money is raised, the story gets completed and then is posted back on the Spot.us site.

Story Exchange focuses this structure on public radio stations where the combination of reporting and production talent, engaged audiences, promotion and reach can unleash new support for local journalism.

Louisville Public Media has selected a handful of stories of local importance. The next stage will be to solicit stories from the audience and then guide listeners to help support those projects with fresh, targeted revenue.