The Guardian is gathering spectators’ photographs from the 2011 Tour de France by partnering with citizen media agency Citizenside.
The Tour de France 2011 page of the Guardian’s website features a slideshow dedicated to sharing the experience of being a spectator.
Citizenside is paying the citizen photographers using fund from the Guardian, editor-in-chief of Citizenside Philip Trippenbach told Journalism.co.uk.
The slideshow includes shots from local eyewitnesses from every stage of the race and spectators are encouraged to post pictures by a series of geo-targetted campaigns.
The Guardian has so far used 645 spectator photos from Citizenside, averaging 38 photos per stage for the first 17 stages of the Tour de France.
In a release, Philippe Checinski, co-founder of Citizenside said:
We’re very excited to be providing our members with such a great opportunity to share their experiences of the Tour de France. It’s not every day that locals from those remote towns get their own photos published on the fifth most visited news site in the world.
Matt McAlister, director of digital Strategy at the Guardian, added:
Working with Citizenside has given us a chance to explore some new ways of partnering with other communities and platforms that share our approach to openness.