Citizen Paine | Citizen Journalism

Citizen journalism labors of love

Ya gotta root for efforts like this one, and ya gotta figure it's a harbinger of what's coming for small communities that just don't have the ad dollars to support a print product: After trying since October to make a go of it with the monthly paper of Winooski, Vermont (6,387 people, according to ePodunk), editor Cathy Resmer announced this week that she's converting The Winooski Eagle to an online-only citizen journalism effort.

Last month, she wrote:

Loyal readers will remember that when I assumed responsibility for the paper last October, I took over for a group of people who were planning to shut it ... I tried everything I could to keep this paper alive, but the bottom line is that it has become a physical and financial drain for me and my family. ... I still believe Winooski needs a local news provider, a place where residents can find out the latest information about the city, the schools, the businesses and the people who make up this unique and exciting community.

In addition to the low publication costs, Resmer cites the frequent updates, site accessibility and searchability, and the citizen journalism component as advantages over the print model.

New site aims to harness reader selections

Common Media has launched Common Times, a social bookmarking site that will try to highlight news stories based on reader interest.

The site has sections on International, United States, Business, Technology, Science, Environment, Arts, Entertainment, Sports and Editorial. While it does not have geographic-based sections, it does encourage users to include location names as topics when adding stories.

This page describes how it works.

Scoopt aims to be middleman for UK citizen photos and videos

Scoopt is a new service that tries to connect UK citizen photojournalists with publishers. You take a picture or video, send it to Scoopt and they sell it. In exchange, Scoopt gets 50 percent of what the publisher pays. That part of the deal may seem reasonable to many amateurs, but Scoopt's six-month exclusive license may not.

During that time, you can't do anything with the photo. "In short, you agree not to publish the photo in any way, shape or form, either directly or indirectly, for six months," Scoopt says.

Here's how Scoopt explains its needs for that exclusivity:

To understand this, imagine that all we had was a non-exclusive license. Let's say you take a 'hot' photo and send it to Scoopt. We do our thing and license the Daily Planet to publish the photo on the front cover of tomorrow's edition.

Naturally enough, the Daily Planet wants to keep this scoop all to itself. Indeed, that's precisely what it's paying for. But unless we have an exclusive license, we simply can't guarantee this. If you or somebody acting on your behalf were to go to the Daily Bugle and sells the same photo (or a similar photo, if you took several of the same event), or even if you were to upload it to a photo-sharing site, the Daily Planet would lose its scoop.

We need an exclusive license for six months in order to guarantee that a scoop stays a scoop. This is where the money is to be made. Your money!

That's quite a commitment to make to a new player, and I'm not sure many citizen journalists will go for it. I suppose if you're a prolific photographer, you might take a chance on Scoopt. If they do good by you, then that six-month term might not seem so stiff.

Current TV recently drew some criticism for a three-month exclusivity policy, though it has responded by saying that it may come up with other options.

Scoopt also might want to consider giving contributors some alternatives. Perhaps the percentage split could vary depending on what sort of licensing rights the photographer is willing to give up.

Linkprops to Phototalk.

UPDATE: Scoopt's Kyle MacRae responds.

New CJ site: MuncieFreePress.com

kpaul mallasch announces the launch of citizen journalism site MuncieFreePress.com with a variation on the Declaration of Independence:

When in the course of journalism it becomes necessary to dissolve the weak bonds that have held the citizens to large media corporations, and for them to band together to create their own media empires, a decent respect to the blogs of the world requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separate. ...

The particulars:

• An article rating system determines where content appears on the site.
• Authors do not have to use their real names.
• A Slashdotesque "Mojo" system allows users to rate message board comments.

TV getting CJ religion

More television stations and cable companies are starting to join the citizen journalism movement:

• New England Cable News Network on July 15 will begin accepting viewer-produced videos to broadcast on its network and to post on its web site, the Boston Globe reports. (Link props to J.D. Lasica at New Media Musings.)
• KRON-TV in San Francisco has launched The Bay Area is Talking, which features a blog by KRON online news manager Brian Shields and aggregates posts from Bay Area bloggers.
• KRON mimics WKRN-TV's Nashville is Talking, which launched in April with Brittney Gilbert doing the blogging and featuring a local blog aggregator.
• KRON and WKRN are moving to a videojournalist model, switching from the usual two-person news crew to one person who does the reporting, camera work and editing. It's a concept that has its doubters.

NECN's announcement on its home page reads:

COMING JULY 15: NECN wants you to join the newsgathering effort. VIDEO NEW ENGLAND is our project to have viewers send in video, directly through our website, for use on air and on the web. All you need is a camcorder and a computer. Join the conversation. Tell us your news. Come back July 15 for VIDEO NEW ENGLAND. In the meantime - get out your video camera and start shooting!

The latter efforts don't make the kind of statement that NECN is making, but they're reminders that it's not just the Lawrence Journal-Worlds that bear watching when we talk about citizen media. Keep an eye, for instance, on Current TV, which recently announced its payment policy for video submissions.

In an ongoing Poynter Online discussion this week, which blogger Tim Porter discussed today, Kathy Gill of the University of Washington Digital Media Master's Degree Program reacted this way when the participants were being too newspaper-centric:

There is no difference, technically, between a newspaper and a TV station. Both use a medium capable of delivering multi-media stories for the news consumer who wants to see-and-hear (v "read").

SFGate launches 'Culture Blog' ... no comment(s) ... yet

SFGate and the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday launched the Culture Blog, a collaboration of  web site and newspaper writers. The blog may be a first on SFGate; it doesn't say, but I don't recall another and it's the only one listed in the Blogs section on the home page.

According to the About page, the bloggers will "be posting daily items -- newsy, opinionated, critical or simply silly -- on our various arts, culture, media, and Web-related interests and obsessions."

This blog -- fun and irreverent -- seems to be a nice fit for SFGate.

But, deep breath, where are the comments from readers? The About page explains:

Input from you, our readers, is all important, and very soon you'll be able to post your comments directly to the Culture Blog.

I dunno. Whaddya think? It's a blog. For a hip, craigslist-happy Bay Area audience. Should we launch even though the comments aren't enabled? Sure. Grrr.

New citizen journalism project, 'I, Reporter,' coming soon

Amy Gahran, author of Contentious, announces plans for "I, Reporter," a project that will include a weblog about citizen journalism and deployment of a citizen journalism team to cover a Boulder, Colo., development proposal.

Gahran, a regular contributor to the E-Media Tidbits column on Poynter Online, says "I, Reporter," will include a training component for citizens and for news organizations.

Some of the most effective journalism of the future could come from direct and indirect collaboration between citizen and pro journalists. Efforts such as "I, Reporter" can show how each role can complement the other, making collaboration possible.

Gahran is right on target with some comments about the state of citizen journalism today:

"Some traditional news organizations are involved with citJ projects and sites. That can help – as long as they don’t try to ghettoize or undermine it. The more passively managed efforts rarely attract many postings or traffic. ... Beyond infrastructure, news orgs usually offer little or no guidance, mentoring, or training for citizen journalists. Nor do they typically highlight citJ efforts, online or via print or broadcast. This is probably why citizen-generated content is typically minimal on such sites. ...

"Perhaps the thorniest issue is how closely citJ should emulate the objectives, format, and style of traditional journalism. For instance, in the citJ realm transparency is usually considered more crucial than objectivity. Many news professionals who’ve labored for years in traditional journalism have a particularly hard time with this."

The goals Gahran has set for  "I, Reporter" and the citizen journalism team make this effort worth watching.

LA Times launches the wikitorial

The LA Times this morning debuted its first wikitorial, "War and Consequences." Er, make that "War & Consequences," as the "and" in the original has been edited to an ampersand -- at least for now.

As feared, the Times is using the typical wiki format, limiting though it does limit the editing only to registered users. It's hard to imagine this process producing any added value on an opinion piece, but I'm certainly willing to watch this wikitorial experiment evolve before passing final judgment.

Even the Times notes, in A Wiki for Your Thoughts, that this model may have problems:

To be sure, encyclopedias and newspaper editorials are very different literary forms. Contributors to Wikipedia share in some general way a commitment to accuracy. By contrast, strong disagreement is built into the concept of an editorial. Plenty of skeptics are predicting embarrassment; like an arthritic old lady who takes to the dance floor, they say, the Los Angeles Times is more likely to break a hip than to be hip. We acknowledge that possibility.

I've got to think that the suggestions of Robert Niles, editor of Online Journalism Review, would have made for a better wiki as applied to an editorial.

Word count: The original Times editorial was 1,064 words (according to MS Word's word count). The current edited version is at 1,767.

UPDATE: Editor&Publisher interviews Michael Kinsley about the launch.

Journalist launches 'web newspaper,' not a blog

The New Haven Advocate reports on CTNewsJunkie.com, a new citizen journalism effort covering Connecticut. It's not a blog but a web newspaper, editor Dan Levine told the Advocate.

The Advocate describes CTNewsJunkie as a hyperlocal site, which doesn't seem like the right description considering it covers an entire state. Heck, Connecticut's got almost as many people as LA.

The Advocate says the site is "surprisingly commentary-free." I guess it's a surprise to the article's authors, but not to anyone who's been following this movement. Just because someone starts a web site that looks like a blog doesn't mean it can't provide straight news coverage.

Levine, an experienced journalist, is reaching out to other citizens to contribute to the site. "However, we make a very serious distinction between reportage and commentary," he writes on the site. "All of our stories feature information gathered through real journalistic legwork. That's not to say we don't welcome your opinions -- we want to hear them! Our comment boards are the ideal place for any thoughts you care to air."

Blogdigger Local: yes; Blogosphere: not there yet

The blogosphere may need to ripen a bit before Blogdigger's new local blog search tool becomes useful. The tool itself has some sweet features, and it seems to have good potential both for the user and advertiser.

To do a search, you must indicate a location (by city or zip), while keywords are optional. I did more than a dozen searches, using small, medium and large cities and a variety of topics from restaurants to sports to gardening.

Here's one of the better search results. I looked for "sports" and "San Francisco, CA" and got this as the third of 99 hits sorted by date (you also can sort by relevancy, which actually might be the better default setting):

May 03, 2005

Brainwagon Radio: A Brief Jaunt To Reno

Where your host finally gets around to recording another podcast detailing his brief weekend trip to Reno. Find out what sports book kind of blows, which ones are okay, and what hotel had rooms overlooking the scenic air conditioner on the roof. You can also find out what I’m doing this weeken...

Tags: General , Audioblogs and Podcasting , Brainwagon Radio

brainwagon [ Feed -         Focus -         Exclude ] by Mark at 10:40 AM

17.4 miles from san francisco, ca - Map It!

This particular blogger posts on many topics (note the "Tags"), including the Oakland A's. OK, so I searched "Sports" and "San Francisco" and found someone interested in the A's. That is cool.

The tags are useful, and I like the Feed, Focus and Exclude options. They're fairly intuitive.

As I said, the results seemed even better when I selected "relevancy" as the default sort.

When I searched on smaller suburban Bay Area communities, I struck out for the most part. Whether the problem is the number of bloggers in those communities or Blogdigger's ability to index them, I don't know.

I do think this tool is one worth watching. It's already gotten the attention of MarketingVOX, blogger Susan Mernit and of  Search Engine Watch,  which notes that you may want to use GeoURL to help search tools locate your blog.