Blog post from citizen journalism news site Demotix, which does pay its contributors, asking whether user-generated content should be paid for.
“Open-source, creative-commons licensed reporting is great, and it can coexist with remunerated citizen-journalism,” says the post.
It’s an interesting landmark: a quickly put-together online campaign in the UK may have influenced a political reversal. Gordon Brown has cancelled proposals for MPs to protect the details of their expenses.
The House of Commons leader, Harriet Harman, cited lack of cross-party support as the reason behind the change, according to the BBC report.
Meanwhile, the Guardian reported:
“The decision is a major victory for freedom of information campaigners and follows growing opposition led by the Liberal Democrats to the proposal, and website campaigns urging the public to email their MP objecting to the move.”
Does this show something of a sea change in political influence? Note that the campaigners directly mobilised their supporters, without reliance on mainstream media.
Tom Steinberg, founder of My Society, the organisation behind the campaign, thinks traditional media manipulation tools had little effect.
He comments on the MySociety blog:
“This is a huge victory not just for transparency, it’s a bellweather for a change in the way politics works. There’s no such thing as a good day to bury bad news any more, the internet has seen to that.”
Matthew Cain, over on his BacAtU blog, gives five reasons why he believes the campaign had clout, and points out that Stephen Fry helped the cause too… with a humble re-tweet on Twitter:
But, also today, a reminder of the way media connections have traditionally worked, with the appointment of a new head of political lobby, the Financial Times’ Jean Eaglesham. But how much influence and inside knowledge does the lobby have anymore?
“Eaglesham dismissed any suggestion that the need for constant ‘rolling’ news has diminished the quality of parliamentary reporting.
“She said: ‘Clearly it’s a risk we’re all aware of, however, now we also have the added value of more analysis and breaking news through blogging and other online content. Things change so fast now, it’s fascinating.'”
The role of the lobby was discussed at the end of last year in the House of Lords. Hazel Blears talked about the influence of the political bloggers in November, in an address to the Hansard Society.
Gawker.com makes a dig at HuffingtonPost’s recruitment method. It says that ‘Off the Bus’ HuffingtonPost’s much lauded citizen journalism project (with 12,000 citizen journalists recruited), has been allowed to ‘stagnate’, and will be now handed over to founder Arianna Huffington’s godson, Matthew Palvesky, and to former Off the Bus intern, Gabriel Beltrone, according to an internal e-mail, re-published by the gossip site. Full story…
Yes – according to StinkyJournalism’s research.
When citizen journalists give content to news sites they are making a gift under IRS guidelines – though only when annual gift is greater than $12,000.
Amy Gahran flags up MixedInk, a new ‘collaboration application’, which ‘might help journalists, news organisations, activists and citizen journalists work with each other and with their communities.’
Users share texts (licensed through Creative Commons) using the MixedInk application, which is something between a wiki, an online forum, a text editor – with a crowd rating element.
“As you write in MixedInk, it searches all other entries and displays text that is similar to yours. While writing, users can view, copy, edit and remix any text that’s been added to the site,” Gahran explains. Full story...
YouTube named the winner of its first journalist contest on Sunday. Arturo Perez Jr took the top prize in the Project:Report competition, which saw participants enter short films in three rounds of video assignments.
Perez was awarded the $10,000 funding prize to travel and work with the Pulitzer Center to produce a report at a ceremony on Sunday night. His winning entry ‘Abilities’ featured residents of Camphill, California – a community where adults with developmental disabilities live, learn and work together – documenting their day-to-day lives on video.
Three days ago, three bloggers received press accreditation after suing New York City, following the Police Department refusal to give them press credentials because they work for online news outlets.
They have now been issued credentials after the police relented, the bloggers’ lawyer, Norman Siegel, has said (via NY Times City Room blog and Associated Press).
Rafael MartÃnez Alequin – (Your Free Press), Ralph E. Smith (The Guardian Chronicle) and David Wallis (featurewell.com) lauched the action after being denied credentials in 2007.
Although they have now been issued press cards the bloggers’ lawyer, Norman Siegel told the NYTimes in a phone interview that the trio would still pursue legal action. The NYTimes.com blog reported:
“Mr. Siegel sad [sic] he was delighted with the outcome, but he vowed to continue the lawsuit, saying further reforms were needed.
Siegel told the NYTimes.com:
“This step recognizes that bloggers are 21st-century journalists (…)
“It’s an important first step, but only a first step, because we still need to address the constitutional problem of who gets press credentials in New York City. The Police Department should not be in the business of determining who’s a journalist.”
Though nationally reported there doesn’t seem to have been much discussion in the online journalism world yet (please do add links below, if you’ve picked up any interesting comments).
It’s an interesting case for the ongoing legal definition of journalist/blogger. In the UK, for example, Jack Straw has announced that some family courts will now be opened to the press. But how will press be defined when the changes come in?
As Journalism.co.uk reported on this blog in December, the definition of ‘journalist’ has not yet been clarified…
The video of the police shooting of Oscar Grant III in Oakland, California, has spread quickly over YouTube in the last week, greatly influencing the nature of the media reports. The most popular video is the clip that originally aired on news channel KTVU, a FOX affiliate in the San Francisco Bay Area.
“Handheld video-enabled cameras and cell phones at the ready, alert witnesses at the scene caught the shooting and the moments that preceded it from different angles.
“In one of their videos, an onlooker yells at a woman recording the scene: ‘Put it on YouTube!’
“Local and national television stations have aired and re-aired excepts from the raw and grainy videos, which have taken on a new life online.”
Imagine if such footage existed in cases such as the UK police shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes: how would reportage or subsequent events have been different? Would the UK media have used the footage in the same way?
Also – does film like this show that we have reached a point where video quality can be disregarded when it’s a strong news story?
Watch the YouTube video ‘Bart Police shooting in Oakland KTVU report‘ here:
As reported on the Journalism.co.uk main site, Washington newspaper rivals have joined forces to publish shared links relating to extreme flooding in the Western Washington region, in one of the first examples of ‘networked link journalism’ in action.
Journalism.co.uk contacted Paul Balcerak, assistant editor of dynamic media at Sound Publishing, publisher of the PNWLocalNews.com site.
Further to his comments in the main piece, Balcerak shares here his thoughts on using Publish2, the link journalism site and application:
What does it have over other link applications (e.g Ma.gnolia/Delicious)?
“The big selling point for me is the create-a-widget that lets you bundle links by tag and embed them (via Javascript) on your web page. Sure, if we wanted to build our own Delicious widget we could have done that, but this was already there for us and allowed us to work a lot faster.”
What benefit is it to you to work with your competitors?
“It made our jobs a lot easier, too. Pnwlocalnews is an aggregate site for all the sites under the Sound Publishing umbrella (about 35 of them, which all represent small, community newspapers).
“Our newsroom staffs aren’t huge – some consist of only a couple or few people – and to be frank, there’s just no way for us to have all the breaking news, all the time.”
At the moment a lot of US regional journalists seem to be using it (hasn’t really taken off in UK yet) – do you think it suits that environment particularly?
“I can’t really say, as I’m really not aware of how the environment outside the U.S. differs.
“I think part of it might be that it’s sort of this ‘Delicious for Journalists,’ which appeals to those who are hesitant to embrace ‘citizen journalism,’ or whatever we’re calling it. It’s more exclusive.
“For my part, it’s just another aggregate network that a ton of great journalists are on – why wouldn’t I be there?”
How could Publish2 improve its service for journalists?
“There are a few little things that could be improved (I can’t seem to find a search function to look up other people on the network) but I think the only real downside is that, well, it’s another aggregate network.
“It’s another username/password that you have to remember and log into everyday. If the Publish2 people ‘Who Make Things Happen’ could get it listed in Shareaholic or ShareThis, that might make it a little more convenient.”
Demotix – the website which aims to match citizen journalists with mainstream media outlets – has been given a slick new look:
The ‘user-generated newswire’ splits revenues from content between citizen journalists and publishers and now features a handy ‘news by continent’ search.
In an interview with Journalism.co.uk, Demotix founder Turi Munthe said the site was aimed at both amateurs and professional freelance journalists and could help combat the ‘mass shrinkage’ of foreign news coverage by media organisations.
“We want to bring professionals back in and broker deals for their images all over the world. Professionals will lead Demotix; they will lead the aspirations of all our street journalists,” he said.
“By creating a website that everyone can access in many ways we give a megaphone to the person on the street where ever they are. Demotix sees itself as standing on the lines of free speech.”