Tag Archives: citizen media

TechCrunch: Can citizen journalism work in the UK? Blottr thinks it has the formula

TechCruch reports on a new tool for citizen journalism: Blottr. It’s described as “a mix of collaborative publishing, ‘authentication algorithm’ and revenue sharing”.

Anyone can sign-up and begin writing a news story or making revisions to an existing one, including adding photos or video. Stories are categorised and users are asked to pinpoint the location relevant to the story on a map. Wiki-style, each story has a revision history (to cover the full cycle of an event) and a list of contributors but it’s the ‘authentication algorithm’ that Blottr says make it stand out from other Citizen Journalism offerings. It attributes credibility to each story based on factors like how “influential” the author is on Blottr, how many other people have contributed to the story and how many times its been shared on Facebook and Twitter or been bookmarked.

Full post on TechCrunch at this link

 

Global Voices Online: Finding alternative revenue streams as a non-profit org

Like all other media organisations in times of economic crisis, Global Voices ‘has to be creative and innovative when it comes to thinking of ways to sustain our organisation,’ writes managing director Georgia Popplewell in a blog post.

GV,  a non-profit community of over 200 bloggers, provides reports from citizen media and blogs around the world. Its funders can be found here. But now the organisation is exploring other source of revenue too: content commissions and underwriting, advertising, consulting and online donations. Popplewell outlines the developments in the post, and calls for further ideas.

Full post at this link…

NB: I am an occasional contributor for Global Voices. If you’ve got story ideas about citizen media in the UK which I can follow up for Journalism.co.uk and GV please get in touch: judith@journalism.co.uk. I am currently looking into examples of asylum seekers in the UK using online media to raise awareness of their situations.

Global Voices Online: The unmasking of NightJack as told by the UK blogs

I will now be cross-posting, and/or contributing occasional posts to Global Voices, the US-based founded but global community of more than 200 bloggers ‘who work together to bring you translations and reports from blogs and citizen media everywhere, with emphasis on voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media.’ Sponsors of the project can be found at this link.

My first post for the site looks at the implications of the NightJack case (which I’ve previously rounded up here) with links to some of the best UK blog posts on the subject.

“A victory for freedom of expression (The Times’)… or a severe restriction for freedom of expression (anonymous bloggers)? Popular opinion is divided, though a blog search would indicate that blogger opinion veers towards the latter.”

Full post at this link…

How Demotix’s contributors have covered Iran election protests

A quick update on the work of pro-am photo agency and news site, Demotix, during this week’s election protests in Iran.

  • On Wednesday Demotix reported that one of its contributors had been arrested. Andy Heath, the site’s commissioning editor, told Journalism.co.uk it is believed the contributor will appear in front of a judge tomorrow [Saturday] and that Demotix is currently seeking more information.

Turi Munthe, its CEO and founder, has made numerous media appearances in which he talked about the use of citizen media during these protests, including the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme, BBC News,  and the World Service. Reuters are also featuring Demotix content.

Munthe said: “In terms of sales, we have also hit a milestone. Reuters is syndicating our content all over the world. Yesterday [Wednesday] we were the lead image on the front page of the Wall Street Journal’s website (see below).”

“Iran is experiencing events not seen since the 1979 Revolution. Demotix was set up precisely to cover and report this kind of event, and we have been at the very centre of the storm.”

wsj

Project for Excellence in Journalism: The State of the Media report 2009 – ‘the bleakest yet’

Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism has released its State of the Media report and – unsurprisingly – the annual evaluation of the US media scene makes for particularly depressing reading this time around.

As the report points out, the problems created by growing online audiences for legacy news organisations have been excerbated by a simultaneous economic collapse.

“Journalism, deluded by its profitability and fearful of technology, let others outside the industry steal chance after chance online. By 2008, the industry had finally begun to get serious. Now the global recession has made that harder,” reads the report.

The report in full, including individual sections on magazines, newspapers, online, local TV and network TV, can be read at this link, but below are some key findings:

Newspapers

In numbers:

  • One in five journalists who were employed by a newspaper in 2001 have gone
  • Around 5,000 professional newspaper jobs are suggested to have been lost in 2008
  • Last year, publicly traded newspaper stocks lost 83 per cent of their remaining value, having already dropped by 43 per cent between 2005-7

On survival:

  • Many US newspapers are planning a geographical retreat in circulation to cut costs
  • Plans to go online-only may not save as much money as hoped, the report suggests:

“Papers still make roughly 90% of their revenue from print and, although the numbers vary by paper, the cost of printing and delivering the printed newspaper averages 40% of costs. For now, it doesn’t add up to sacrifice potentially 90% of revenues to save 40% of costs.”

  • What newspapers will survive and what structural differences to these survivors have, asks the report. Will print still be a part of these news brands?
  • The death of the newspaper industry is not imminent, adds the study, as on the whole US newspapers were profitable in 2008

Hope for the future?

  • Alternative news operations and websites have continued to grow in number, BUT the scale of these is still small and they lack profitability
  • Newspapers have improved over the last year in adapting to new trends and building partnerships

Online

  • Insufficient innovation in online advertising
  • When it comes to alternative, online news start-ups and distribution models, ‘[T]here has been little honest assessment of economic sustainability’, says the research
  • Yahoo news continues to dominant as main news source online – its newspaper advertising partnership and human-based news editing are particular assets, suggests the report

Special analysis of citizen media and new journalism ventures is also offered in the report. Contributor to the newspaper section of the report, Danna L. Walker, blogs here; while the Columbia Journalism Review has created a ‘guess the year of the report’ quiz game.

GlobalVoicesOnline: 270 proposals for citizen media projects – the five best

In January Rising Voices, part of GlobalVoices, received over 270 proposals from activists, bloggers, and NGOs: ‘all wanting to use citizen media tools to bring new communities – long ignored by both traditional and new media – to the conversational web,’ writes David Sasaki.

“It was, by far, the highest number of proposals Rising Voices has ever received in its two-year history of supporting citizen media training projects.”

Five were chosen as ‘most representative of the innovation, purpose and goodwill that Rising Voices aims to support’: Abidjan Blog Camps; Ceasefire Liberia; Real Experience of the Digital Era (China); Nomad Green (Mongolia); Empowerment of Women Activists in Media Techniques (Yemen).

Full story at this link…

A week of innovation from Al Jazeera ends with launch of mobile sites

Media coverage on Al Jazeera English hasn’t always been positive, but since its launch it’s done some interesting things multimedia-wise: launching all its content on YouTube, in April 2007, for example (its English content page can be found here).

More broadly the Al Jazeera network, which includes the Arabic channels, has also not been afraid to try out new technology, with the launch of a ‘citizen-journalism upload portal’ for example.

This week we’ve reported on its video content partnership with the Independent newspaper site. While they’ve tightened up the PR act (no longer in-house, it’s managed by Brown Lloyd James, the same agency that handles press for the Telegraph group) these are newsworthy developments.

Events in Gaza have been a chance for Al Jazeera to experiment and show off its multimedia – through projects showcased at Al Jazeera Labs. Follow Al Jazeera’s head of new media, Mohamed Nanabhay, @Mohamed, on Twitter to find out more.

Particularly exciting is its release of material under a Creative Commons licence, in its 3.0 form – allowing other sites reproduce the broadcaster’s video content as long as they attribute the source.

Today comes further news from the broadcaster: the beta launch of its Arabic and English mobile websites, which will work on any mobile handset with web browsing ability.

“Users only need to bookmark the following web addresses on their mobile, for English news http://m.aljazeera.net/, and for Arabic news http://ma.aljazeera.net/,” a release from the company said.

“The mobile web initiative is one of the key services that is being launched as part of our New Media strategy”, Saeed Othman Bawazir, Al Jazeera’s director of technology, said in the release.

“The aim is to make our content more accessible to new audiences across various new platforms. With the launch of this mobile service, we hope to provide our audience with a customized news browsing experience on the mobile device of their choice,” he said.

This initiative includes ‘delivering video and other content over interactive platforms,’ such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and iTunes, the release said.


World Aids Day in multimedia form

Support World AIDS Day

World Aids Day, now in its 20th year, seems to be markedly more multimedia this year, although not much video about yet. Anyway, here’s a selection of content:

  • You can customise your blog, website or blog posts with this item. Here’s the embed script: <a href=”http://www.worldaidsday.org” title=”Link to the official World AIDS Day website”><img src=”http://www.worldaidsday.org/images/WAD/ribbon_download.gif” width=”120″ height=”89″ alt=”Support World AIDS Day” /></a>

An interactive map of openly HIV positive bloggers, and citizen media relating to World Aids Day, via GlobalVoices:


View Larger Map

Starbucks advert here (via TakePart.com):

and an advert from the Banyan Tree Project here:

@SoE: (Audio) ITV Local – citizen journalism and traditional news side-by-side – yet distinct

Nick Hayworth, channels manager of ITV Local London, outlined how the broadband wing of the local TV service was trying to win back favour with its lost viewership – the trick? Mixing citizen journalism and more traditional news online.

To maintain the public trust and integrity of each, he added, a clear separation is placed between citizen media and professional journalism on the site.

“The problems of trust occur for us when we start to carry mini documentaries or standalone citizen news videos, since ITV Local was launched we have been sent hundreds of videos made by local people that effect them, in those films there are often some strongly held opinions and scenes that sometimes tell us in very graphic ways some of the major social and political issues.”

ITV, he says, maintains the standard of citizen journalism content and keeps its 39 local borough channels in London distinct from its traditional news through ‘compliance, labelling and separation’.

Listen here for his definition of what this means:

[audio:http://www.journalism.co.uk/sounds/itv.mp3]