Category Archives: Citizen journalism

YouTube and Pulitzer announce five Project:Report finalists

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Project Report, the journalism contest organised by YouTube and the Pulitzer Center to reward non-professional journalists producing videos, is drawing to a close.

Until January 9, viewers can vote on videos produced by the five finalists, who have progressed through two previous rounds of the competition, producing a different short film each time.

Entries include videos about Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender (GLBT) groups in the US, sexual abuse by priests and a community of developmentally disabled adults.

Videos can be watched and voted for on the YouTube Project:Report channel and the winner, who will receive a $10,000 grant to report on any topic, from anywhere in the world, and a scholarship at the Pulitzer Center, will be declared on 11 January.

Does a series of Tweets really qualify as ‘citizen journalism’?

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The Telegraph proclaims Mike Wilson a ‘citizen journalist’ after quoting his Tweets sent from the scene of the plane crash at Denver International Airport.

Mike Wilson, a passenger on the plane, sent these Tweets after leaving the burning plane.

According to the Telegraph: “As the entire right side of the Boeing 737 burned, Mr Wilson shared his experience live with his family, friends, and an increasingly wide audience of strangers on Twitter.”

The headline reads ‘Citizen journalist sets the world a Twitter after Denver plane crash.’

Wilson used Twitter to communicate to family and friends in a public way, and then to document his appearances on the television news, but is this really an example of ‘citizen journalism?’ Or a public eye-witness account? Or is there no difference?

Guido to introduce community rating system to blog

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(or, ‘how many times can we use the word ‘comment’ in one blog post’?)

Guido Fawkes got the comments going today with a post that said he is ‘mulling over’ whether to moderate comments over the holiday period. He also announces that in the new year a ‘community rating’ element will be introduced to his blog (details at end of this post).

Guido Fawkes, aka Paul Staines, referred back to November, to the Goldsmiths seminar on media ethics and a comment from the Times Comment editor, Anne Spackman, who said that TimesOnline spends ‘six figures’ on pre-moderating online comments [unclear over what time period – Journalism.co.uk will follow-up soon. UPDATE 19/12: Anne Spackman told Journalism.co.uk that the paper cannot currently clarify exact details, but that a six figure bill is paid to another partner.]

Fawkes said today on his blog:

“It is certainly expensive in time, every morning Guido deletes a load of comments which have, in his rather arbitrary judgement, just gone too far.”

Journalism.co.uk was also at the Goldsmiths event and spoke to Fawkes afterwards. He told Journalism.co.uk that he doesn’t moderate comments – ‘it has to get pretty gynecological before I do’.

In regards to the BNP list (which had leaked that week): “I did allow it. oh terrible, terrible, terrible. Oh well…”

“I deleted the stuff about Baby P,” he told Journalism.co.uk.

“I noticed it [information about Baby P] was still on the BBC’s website. I called them up, and they said ‘we’re not taking it down because the order doesn’t apply’.  I said ‘well, is it because it’s an order or because it is right or wrong?'”

Fawkes said that if he is found to be ‘in the wrong’ he’ll take something down, but added that ‘it’s very difficult to send me a writ.’

“Unless you catch me having a drink here, where are you going to send the writ?”

“There’s no bricks and mortar,” he said.

While Guido Fawkes says on his blog post that he takes a ‘sticks and stones view to a large extent’, he outlines a number of changes to be introduced in the New Year:

“[Y]ou [the users] will still be able to say what you like (within somewhat arbitrary inconsistent limits) without pre-moderation or registering. However there will be incentives for those who produce better quality commentary based on a new element of co-conspirator community rating.

“Good comments will be more prominently displayed, disliked comments will be less prominent. The biggest innovation is that it will be possible for readers to set their own tolerance thresholds. Poorly rated comments will be invisible to those who set their preferences accordingly.

“If you only want to see comments judged by co-conspirators to be witty, amusing or illuminating, set your threshold to ‘Recommended’. Don’t want to read foul language? Set your threshold to ‘U’. Want to see all and any comments no matter how foul? Set your threshold to ‘XXX’.

“If your commentary is consistently recommended your comments will automatically be more prominent in the future and may even get highlighted on the frontpage.”

Unmoderated comments follow his post.

YouTube round-up: BBC Russian and Davos videos

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The BBC has made good on its October promise to launch six new video channels on YouTube in Urdu, Spanish, Russian, Persian, Portuguese and Arabic and has rolled out its Russian stream.

The BBC Russian YouTube channel will feature footage from BBC Russian correspondents and Russian-language reports on major news events.

The other multi-language channels will be launched between now and early 2009, a press release from the corporation said.

YouTube is getting in on the act again ahead of the World Economic Forum at Davos next month by asking users to send their video answers to the following questions:

Are you confident that global growth will be restored in 2009?
Will the environment lose out to the economy in 2009?
Will the Obama administration improve the state of the world in 2009?
Should company executives have a code of ethics similar to doctors and lawyers?

The best clips, which can be uploaded to the site’s Davos channel, will be broadcast at the forum during sessions; while the user who creates the best video, as voted for by other YouTubers, will have the opportunity to attend the event, all expenses paid, as a citizen reporter for YouTube.

In a repeat of last year’s event, a YouTube booth for attendees of the forum to upload their video responses to the debates will also be available, according to a press release.

This seems to be just one strand of the forum’s multimedia activities. It’s also represented on Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Flickr and  questions for press conferences can be submitted via Qik and Mogalus.

Reuters.co.uk: Put your questions to David Cameron via Twitter now

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Reuters is hosting an interview with David Cameron via Twitter. This morning (Monday), from 10am, the Conservative party leader David Cameron is talking about the economy and the credit crunch at Thomson Reuters’ Canary Wharf office and his speech will be followed by a question and answer session. Users of Twitter can use the tag #askDC to put questions to Cameron, and Reuters will monitor all the responses. The questions are already coming in. The Reuters Newsmaker can be used to track all proceedings.

FromtheFrontline: More Twitter conventions would have aided Mumbai coverage

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“As Twitter use becomes more widespread, so it becomes increasingly difficult to pinpoint the type of information you are looking for,” writes Daniel Bennett.

“A vast of sea of tweets with #Mumbai quickly developed, and if you were a journalist trying to find eyewitness accounts you found yourself painstakingly wading through them all. Those who did probably found it was time well spent, but is there a better way?” Bennett asks.