Citizen Paine | Citizen Journalism

Micro Persuasion, Philly Future to try 'honor tags'

Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion is using the honor tag system that Dan Gillmor and Grassroots Media started last week. Rubel says he would like to see the system add another level to hold people accountable for the tags they use:

What HonorTags really lacks right now is some sort of editing/policing system. This way, the community can weed out tag offenders who are inappropriately spam tags. In other words, if Grassroots Media can somehow recreate the same kind of self-policing community that watches over Wikipedia, HonorTags will become a more reliable system. Perhaps some merging with social networks will help facilitate this.

The folks at Philly Future also plan to start testing out honor tags, according to this post at Paradox1x:

... we will use these within Philly Future to help folks identify - for themselves - what they consider the intent of their own writing. I believe it will help readers - and editors - know whether an author wants them to consider a post in different important ways.

Self-tagging is imperfect, for sure. It can be easily abused. And I don't pretend to be an expert on the subject. But I welcome any new tools in my belt that can make life easier. I think this can be one.

Don't just find the best stuff -- preserve it

Steven Madoff at Contentsphere, picking up on Leon Sterling's Is Blogging Killing Democracy? post at New West, writes about the fleeting nature of digitized thoughts:

The brave promise of this new content source is that it does (at least) three things: first, it levels the opportunity to publish; second, it adds a multitude of voices and perspectives; third, it brings precisely this evanescence, this sense of fleeting thought and all of its freshness to readers. And a fourth thing that is inevitable: it will turn readers into writers.

Sterling worries about the lack of archiving of internet communication. "Today, our beliefs are like fireflies – they shine for a few brief moments, but then they disappear, and no one knows where they went," he says. Madoff suggests that the best of today's digital writing may remain available to future generations as established online publications embrace citizen journalism and, possibly, put some of that content into print.

The Internet Archive is trying to preserve what we read, watch and listen to online. Read more here.

Sterling's comments, though, also deal with email, which may not be retained the way letters used to be.

More readers, as Madoff notes, are turning into writers. Yet, preserving our thoughts is far more complicated than when we used paper and pen.

Do people retain personal emails with the thought that their children or grandchildren (or future historians) might want to read them? Do they print the best to ensure that their survivors won't have to wade through a maze of Outlook email folders or, worse, have to extract old emails from a format or storage medium that's no longer in use? Did people learn a lesson from the legal battle that a dead marine's family waged this year and won, getting Yahoo! to provide access to the young man's web-based email account?

When I was growing up in the Midwest, we used to try to catch fireflies and put them in a bottle to try to make a bright light. This analogy is breaking down a bit, but what I take from it is the value of picking out the shining lights and finding a way to preserve them before they fade. (I think there's a way to work mosquitoes into this thought, but I'm going to stop right here.)

UPDATE: Moments after posting this piece, this JD Lasica item shows up, Digital Deeds Never Die, linking to this Business Week article. Maybe the analogy needs to switch to cockroaches.

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.

NYT's take on Greensboro News-Record

A New York Times piece today on the Greensboro (North Carolina) New-Record's citizen journalism drive -- Why Newspapers Are Betting on Audience Participation (yeah, ya gotta register) -- says the newspaper's evolution is going slower than expected; the paper is considering collaborating on an investigative project with a citizen journalism upstart; some elected officials also are bloggers, making them competitors.

A quote from News-Record Editor John Robinson about Greensboro's active blogging community illustrates the thinking that puts the paper ahead of the curve, even if its changes are coming along slowly:

They were commenting on civic affairs and what the city council did and all the dumb things The News & Record did, and that annoyed me because they were misinformed," he said. "But they were scooping us. They knew things that were going on that we didn't, in the schools and other places. There was power in what they were doing."

The N-R may be getting ready to tap that power in a significant way. An MSM-newbie collaboration may be in the works, according to the article. The paper is considering teaming up with Greensboro101.com on an investigation into water quality.

The Times story gives examples of the competition that the N-R is seeing in the form of sources' blogs. City Council members have beat the News-Record on a couple stories, including once when a reporter called a councilman for a comment on a Wal-Mart deal and the councilman promptly blogged the news. So much for that exclusive. Another council member's blog beat the paper on a city budget story, the Times reports. (RELATED: Reporters: Are YOU 'On The Record'?)

Overall, the Times reports, the N-R's progress has been slower than hoped, partly because of the magnitude of the project, partly because the publisher wants to see some signs of a return before investing more dollars.

The Times says, "The unveiling of the new site was bumped back throughout the spring and is now planned on July 11. The site's participatory aspects will not be available until a few months later." (RELATED: Greensboro N-R redesign will boost reader engagement)

Here's what the Times article had to say about the pace of change at the News-Record:

At this stage, though, enthusiasm in the newsroom for the town square initiative has outstripped the online reality. Charles Stafford, the strategic development manager, said developing the Web site turned out to be a bigger job than the editors had imagined. And management has not yet thrown in more money or staff members.

The unveiling of the new site was bumped back throughout the spring and is now planned on July 11. The site's participatory aspects will not be available until a few months later.

Robin Saul, president and publisher of The News & Record, said the paper was waiting for more marks of success before putting money into the online project and was likely to put it into the sales staff first. "You don't invest resources until you're sure there will be a return," he said.

In response, the article quotes Steve Outing, who writes about citizen journalism for Poynter Online and Editor&Publisher, saying that given how early we are in the citizen journalism game, he "was not troubled by what he called the Greensboro paper's 'unimpressive' start."

While we are early, I wonder whether the N-R's inability to keep up with expectations will have any long-term fallout. For instance, consider the turnaround time for publication of citizen journalism articles. Lex Alexander, the paper's citizen journalism coordinator, noted last month that due to an extended absence he was a couple weeks behind on editing and posting user-submitted articles. Currently, the N-R's Your News page has nothing posted since June 24 (I don't know whether that's due to a lack of submissions or the turnaround time).

Whatever the reasons for the delays -- lack of staff to cover when a key editor is not available, the inherent lag time created by the N-R's policy of editing reader submissions, etc. -- the danger is that contributors will feel slighted. If they do, they may simply turn to a competitor like Greensboro101 to publish. (RELATED: Publish the Site You Can Maintain)

This NYT piece on Greensboro comes less than a week after the paper published an article titled Web Content by and for the Masses.

UPDATE: N-R Editor John Robinson responds to the NYT article:

Yes, we're blogging. podcasting and soliciting citizen submissions to reconnect with readers. But the overriding reason we're barging into the form is to extend the ability to break news, spur civic engagement, to help readers, to be a watchdog. Pretty much what we're trying to do in the newspaper.

 

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.

Current TV: Look for variations on video submission policy

Current TV's Robin Sloan, responding to criticism about a new video submission policy, says the target contributors are "up-and-coming young video producers who aspire to do this for a living."

Look for a different policy aimed for others, Sloan says:

We think there are other kinds of contributors out there, too. Some may be potential citizen journalists who want to participate in different ways, on different terms, with different goals.

We're working on another version of our model that will suit them better, but we're not quite ready to announce it yet.

The harshest criticism I've seen comes from Josh Wolf, who particularly doesn't like the way Current's licensing agreement precludes a contributor from trying to sell a piece anywhere else disseminating the video elsewhere -- even on own's own videoblog -- for three months after submitting it to Current. Wolf is a volunteer organizer for a Current TV Meetup Group, and he says he's been told his criticisms are inappropriate considering his role. He explains here.

More discussion happening at Bayosphere, where Dan Gillmor referred to the submission terms as "Submission, indeed."

Greensboro N-R talks trolls with its readers

Greensboro (North Carolina) News-Record Editor John Robinson and readers are wrestling the question of message board moderation in "The Silence of the Trolls."

The discussion illustrates the challenge: One reader complains that reader comments containing profanity have been allowed to stay on the site, while another says that to remove such comments would be a heavy-handed "hall monitor approach."

The positive thing happening here is that Robinson and the site's readers are discussing this problem and possible solutions. That kind of interaction is what makes readers feel a sense of ownership and empowerment. Sorry for the buzzwords, but, hey, that's the difference between static shovelware (another buzzword) news sites and those that are making an effort to connect with readers -- not just for the sake of connecting but for building a better online experience.

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