Category Archives: Citizen journalism

Innovations in Journalism – ScribbleSheet

image of scribblesheet website

1) Who are you and what’s it all about?

I am John Ndege, co-founder of ScribbleSheet.

ScribbleSheet is a citizen journalism site that focuses on contrarian opinions and unreported news typically with a young adult slant.

Its about empowering people people to express themselves so everyone has a voice.

2) Why would this be useful to a journalist?

Its a great place to find interesting stories mainstream publications forget or simply ignore. The youth angle helps give an insight into what the under 30’s think about politics, society, business and technology.

For writers, ScribbleSheet gives them the opportunity to improve their skills and gain feedback from the community. Editors of major publications should take note they may just find their next writer on ScribbleSheet, there are some talented individuals on the site.

3) Is this it, or is there more to come?

We don’t believe in standing still. We are continually evolving, adding new features and responding to user feedback. We cannot reveal anything just yet but expect some major changes in the coming months.

4) Why are you doing this?

If I want to read alternative and insightful stories about politics and society that have a youthful slant I have few places to go.

If I am an aspiring writer with intelligent things to say but lack the expertise or time to commit to a blog where do I go? There are not many places that fit these requirements yet there is a burgeoning need. Just think about all the student journalists after they graduate, most stop writing. This needn’t happen.

5) What does it cost to use it?

Everyone’s favourite word – FREE!

6) How will you make it pay?

Advertising initially, with other possible revenue streams to follow. However, at the moment we are focused on acquiring readers and writers. Presently we are looking for angel investment.

National Press Club to permit ‘citizen journalist’ members

The US’ National Press Club (NPC) is to allow ‘citizen journalists’ to become members through a partnership with cit-j site Helium.com.

The doors aren’t completely open: only the top contributors to the site – those that have earned a five-star rating for their body of work – will be able to apply for membership. However, reaching out to new kinds of media is a big gesture for an established, traditional journalism institution.

Helium’s ratings system will allow the NPC to effectively take on only the most ‘professional’ of the site’s citizen contributors. This could have a two-way impact, as Mark Ranalli, president and CEO of Helium, suggests in a release: “With their [the NPC’s] involvement, we believe we can elevate the stature, awareness and quality of citizen journalism.”

Multimedia collaborations provide Super Tuesday coverage online

Yesterday was just plain pancake day in the UK, but over the water it was Super Tuesday, as 24 of America’s 50 states voted on which candidates should be put forward for the country’s presidential election in November.

The coverage of the day’s events online saw some innovative multimedia and collaborative efforts from new and existing media outlets:

Mapping

Results + different time zones + different states = a great opportunity for breaking news displayed on mashed-up maps.

Google got in on the action with a map displaying live results and, with the help of Twitter and Twittervision, ‘tweets’ from across the US to give instant reactions from voters.

In another partnership with YouTube, as part of the site’s You Choose ’08 channel, Google is aggregating videos and clips from news organisations, candidates and users about Super Tuesday and plotting them on a Google map.

Elsewhere the BBC’s results map, which features as part of a broader election section, gives an easily navigable, state-by-state guide to the figures.

New collaboration

Publish2 launched a bookmarking system for newsrooms, bloggers and journalists, to create an aggregation service. Interested parties were asked to register for a free account and create a specific tag they would use – these tagged items can then be turned into a news feed by Publish2 to be repurposed on the tagger’s site.

Here’s an overview of the Networked Newsrooms idea or, to see it in action, visit the Knoxville News Sentinel or the New Jersey News Herald.

Video

Newsweek and The Washington Post teamed up for a five hour live webcast, encouraging viewers to react in a live webchat. Meanwhile The Huffington Post produced handheld footage from a Barack Obama rally in New York in the build-up to Tuesday and a live blog of the actual event.

MTV sent 23 of its ‘street team’ of citizen journalists to cover the polls and upload footage from video cameras and mobile phones. The clips are being distributed through MTV Mobile, Think.MTV.com and the Associated Press‘ online video network.

And finally – a slideshow…

…well, it’s much more than that really – De Volkskrant created an all-singing, all-dancing ‘slideshow’ with music, text, links, audio analysis and video giving an overview of the candidates, as well as a live results page for Tuesday’s results.

Current TV to hire UK vlogging journalists

Current TV to hire UK vlogging journalists

User-generated video blogging platform Current is planning to hire journalists in the UK to contribute to short video news posts and edit other video contributions.

The platform aimed at an audience of young adults recently made an agreement with Salon and The Guardian to supply vlogs (video blogs) to its online peer-to-peer news network. Reporters for The Guardian started filing pieces last week.

The platform, which also runs a cable TV channel, this week placed ads on Journalism.co.uk and looking to hire a Newspod producer and a NewsPod preditor (essentially a journalist/video editor) in the UK to create news packages for its headline news service.

newspod ad

The newspod producer will be responsible for working video feeds selecting news stories, scripting and performing voice-overs for Current’s headline news service. The preditor will be responsible for producing and editing news packages.

Citizen journalist ’sells’ video for €100,000

A video from French citizen journalism website Citizenside is expected to generate €100,000 (£75,285) of revenue after being sold to Paris Match, the Editors Weblog reports, with a commission rate of between 50 and 75 per cent going to the amateur creator.

The footage from Citizenside, which recently signed a partnership with Agence France-Presse, was of the newsworthy former Société Générale trader Jérôme Kerviel signing a statement at a police station, according to the report.

Getlippy TV- latest online video service from Hearst Digital

Getlippy tv image

Hearst Digital has launched an online TV service – Getlippy TV. No great surprises that yet another TV service has been launched with the heavy burden of “entertainment news, funnies, plus behind-the-scenes footage from a sister mag”.

They will also be taking videos from readers – prepare to be dazzled…

Birmingham Mail looking at developing community-based sites

In addition to the launch of a new website, The Birmingham Mail is looking at developing and hosting a series of community-based education websites.

In interview with Journalism.co.uk, editor Steve Dyson said the newspaper was looking at a range of options for local community sites.

One of the options, he said, was to host sites for local educational institutions, where students would write the content.

“What we are planning further down the line is local community websites, again hosted by the Birmingham Mail, but they may well be sites in their own right,” he told Journalism.co.uk.

“We are looking at a variety of community sites, mainly around schools and media courses in schools, where they have asked if they can fill a local community website for us.

“We are talking to educational groups about it. There are about 15 schools around Birmingham that are developing media courses and as part of the courses they have to have websites which have to be updated daily by students. What we are talking to them about is hosting it for them.”

Dyson stressed that these sites were very much in the early planning stage but were being considered along the same lines as the series of community sites launched last year by the Teesside Gazette, another Trinity Mirror paper.

Launch of first widget for citizen journalist news

GroundReport, the ‘user-driven’ news site, has launched what it claims to be the first citizen journalism widget.

The application, which works on a range of operating systems, will be updated with the latest citizen journalism headlines from across the globe and lets users filter  news by category.

Guido Fawkes: Ten years ago today Drudge ended the reign of the media gatekeepers

On this day in 1997, Guido says, blogger Matt Drudge posted a story about Newsweek editors spiking a piece about Bill Clinton and intern Monica Lewinsky.

“His story ended once and for all the gatekeeper ability, if not the mentality, of the mainstream media elite. He later said: “We are all newsmen now.”