Reuters and Yahoo! Enlist Camera Phones 94
eldavojohn writes "In a huge advancement of citizen journalism, Reuters and Yahoo! are asking average people to be journalists with their cell phones. I hope participants don't run the risks others have for photographing the police. You can expect to see these new photos being used at Yahoo! and Reuters.com starting tomorrow." From the article: "'People don't say, "I want to see user-generated content,"' said Lloyd Braun, who runs Yahoo's media group. 'They want to see Michael Richards in the club. If that happens to be from a cellphone, they are happy with a cellphone. If it's from a professional photographer, they are happy for that, too.' Users will not be paid for images displayed on the Yahoo and Reuters sites. But people whose photos or videos are selected for distribution to Reuters clients will receive a payment."
The BBC have been doing this for a while. (Score:5, Informative)
If you capture an unfolding event on camera or mobile phone, either as a photograph or video, then please send it to BBC News.
You can send pictures or video to yourpics@bbc.co.uk or via mms by dialling +44 (0)7725 100100.
Please do not endanger yourself or others, take any unnecessary risks or infringe any laws.
That disclaimer is very important, the BBC does not want CNN reporters sending tapes from 2000 foot skydiving through a twister.
They also have a policy in place to pay people for certain images.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Photos from a mobile phone these days with their 2MP or more cameras are probably reasonable enough for the sort of photos online news sites use with stories.
Re: (Score:2)
not the first (Score:5, Funny)
I see they're taking FOX News' lead then. FOX has been asking average people to be journalists for years.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
I don't think so. What "news" will common people report? If it's the same common people that decide which TV program is successfull, by switching to a different channel if the current program requires at least some brain cells to follow, than the outcome and the quality of such news is nothing I'm looking forward to.
Besides that, there's another issue here: Turning away responsibility from the journalist/magazine/TV station to the common people. A german boulevard newspaper ("BILD") already publishes pic
Re: (Score:2)
I found phone-photos from the Lebanese equivalant of "Joe Sixpack" (let alone aid workers, etc.) during the last Israeli conflict to be quite interesting.
Re: (Score:2)
Many many years back in a small town in New Mexico, a third party presidential candidate was showing up as part of a whistle stop campaign. If I mentioned Which candidate it would date me
I was a young lad at the time and, though my father despised this candidate he, I, and most of the rest of the town went down to the train depot to see and hear. No other candidate was going to visit our hick town and other then watching the grass grow it was the only entertainment that day. T
Re:not the first (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Absolute polarization is widespread these days in America: If you are at all critical of A, you are automatically labeled as a B-supporter, so they will automatically respond by attacking B.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Umm, no [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
ROTFL. Fox is, at best, in a distant second place - as CNN was asking average people to send in photographs/video a decade before Fox even existed.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
The BBC (Score:1, Redundant)
Glad to see this happening (Score:4, Insightful)
Tornado sightings have worked this way forever. Bubba catches the twister on his video-recordin' machine, the local NBC affiliate pays him 100 bucks for the tape, and soon the whole country gets to see video of a funnel cloud snapping power lines a hundred yards away. CNN has recently been pushing a "Send, Share, See YOUR Stories on CNN" initiative, and now Yahoo and Reuters are jumping on the bandwagon. It's about time that the concept is catching on more broadly... I just hope it gets used for something more relevant than Britney flashing her hoo-ha.
Michael Richards is a bad example (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Some poor sap... (Score:1)
Fake Photos (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
And a related worry: Did these Reuters people just give up on doing their own journalism? Do they do anything except copy AP stories?
Re: (Score:2)
Why not? It will make it easier to get pictures to go with their fake news [bostonherald.com].
ignorant corporate hacks (Score:5, Interesting)
So if the for-profit company that takes money from your effort is not paying people, why would ANYONE send them juicy information, the best and most timely photos? (Other than corporate spin and marketing...) These suits do not understand human motivation at all. While many community/corporate models do work well - they work when the people who contribute significantly get something significant back for their participation in the community.
Stop letting your creativity be yoked by the merchants.
The only possible reason for people to upload is an individul's desire for the story/photo to get out - which puts even more bias on the distorted, biased coporate news process. Now everyone is "fighting" for what news is real - in an arena where people will always lose to the larger corporate profit motive.
Why wouldn't you send it to groups like Indymedia [indymedia.org] or other groups, collectives and nonprofits that have ideals more in line with the interests of individuals? Why wouldn't you post it to your own flickr account, craigslist, or make a blog post about it yourself? All these tools are available to anyone who can get the API working to upload it to Reuters, and work more in the individual's interest.
We no longer need merchants to control creative expression.
CNN launched a 'thing' like this too a while back (iReport, video [youtube.com])and it was laughed off the airwaves. They wanted you to "be the reporter!" and not pay you for your effort - while the whole time they make money off the ads your reports support. If people have a great story - post the video online with a site that allows you to share revenue from traffic, and includes real rewards for creating the content to those people who really create it.
Re:ignorant corporate hacks (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a sense of community, I think. People put forth relatively small amounts of effort and get back rich content from the sum. The whole may be no more than the sum of the parts, but the sum is a lot more valuable to you than your part.
Re:ignorant corporate hacks (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
It's like how an art gallery will pay you your cut if they sell your canvas, but they don't pay you for merely displaying your art on their walls.
From the way it's formatted, it offers to open the door to enthusiasts, with plausible compensation if the content warrants it. Reuters' money train is exactly based on content subscriptio
Re: (Score:2)
I will go to great lengths to make a quick buck for myself.
I will do nothing to help a corporation use my effort to make a quick buck for themselves, while i get nothing.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:ignorant corporate hacks (Score:5, Insightful)
Bragging rights.
"My photo was on [big news agency] - Just look here!"
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
It's to be expected. (Score:3, Insightful)
Prepare yourself... (Score:1)
Although this sounds like a neat idea in the beginning, just wait until it gets abused by the masses. Bye bye Yahoo! and Reuters.
What Controls Against Staging/Faking? (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the numerous problems Reuters has had with its own Middle East reporting, what controls are they going to put in place to ensure that these Citizen Journalists aren't feeding them fake pictures?
Crow T. Trollbot
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I've occasionally had friends send photos to me, or the other way around, of things that capture an event far better than the news did the next day. There will be times when this is the case of civil rights abuses that we can
Re: (Score:1)
Indeed. I was glad the article at least briefly mentioned this dilemma, but I fear it's more dangerous and more difficult to solve than they would like to admit. Basically what we have here is a shift that parallels the move from traditional television to reality television, with similar motivations: cheaper than paying professional talent, no unions to deal with, and the viewer finds it more... "visceral", or something. But there's another, less concrete thought that might be behind this. Consider that whe
It's the radio station "request" model (Score:2)
Pretty simple, I suspect. They'll use the model that US radio stations have used since the dawn of the Top 40 list.
1. Station compiles list of songs that they will play
2. Station tells fans to call in their requests
3. Station ignores all requests for songs not on the list
4. Station puts requests for listed son
This is new? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
It can get worse if such sites attempted to claim copyright for such images. If such sites claimed copyright on user-submitted images, and the users distributed the images to other places, can the users get sued for copyright infringement of their own images even though they have not signed anything and re
Who ARE these people? (Score:2)
Who are these people? And could we possibly get them all to congregate at a remote nuclear testing area?
Seriously, I'm sick and tired of "having" to see "news" about celebrities who are pregnant, dizzy, out shopping, picking up the newspaper from their front lawn, etc., etc., etc.
Sure, I could choose not to turn on the TV, choose not to read the newspapers
Re: (Score:2)
Serenity now! (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Lloyd Braun (Score:2)
Honest question (Score:3, Interesting)
Where is the line between "good for justice/democracy/etc" and "invasion of privacy?"
Re: (Score:2)
Government abusing regular people - evil, mostly because they can cover each other's backs quite well no matter who's at fault.
Regular people abusing regular people - equality.
Either way, you're still getting invaded. If you react, the only difference is that of a winnable case of simple assault and a no-win case of assault on a police officer.
Re: (Score:1)
The BBC Do This (Score:2, Interesting)
The first time I saw this used was probably the 7/7 attacks in London - many of the first pictures came from mobile phones, and were much more effective at capturing the atmosphere aro
Major problem with this (Score:3, Interesting)
What publishing cell phone camera photos and movies does is virtually eliminate the possiblity of finding anyone that hasn't been exposed to every possible detail, no matter what.
Another aspect of this is when an "eyewitness" account differs from the rather narrow view of the event presented by a camera. Which would be more likely to be believed? I suspect most people under 30 would unquestingly accept the camera view and people over 30 far more likely to give them equal weight if not be more likely to favor the human. Yes, human memory isn't perfect but neither is the interpretation presented by the cameraman.
And, it is very difficult to tell the difference in the "Internet Age" between something faked and the real thing in a photo when the time between it is taken and when it is old news is like 10 minutes. You either publish it immediately or it has zero value - because everyone else already put it on their web pages. The wire services, AP & Reuters, are having some pretty serious issues with this now, and it is likely just the beginning.
Oh yeah, that'll work. (Score:3, Informative)
Here, take a look at Green Helmet Guy [blogspot.com], the face of anti-semitic news from the Lebanon.
This is a chance for the S/N ratio on the internet to head to, what, minus infinity?
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed, that is text-book propaganda. However, so is calling it "anti-semitic". If anything, it's "anti-Israeli", which is a completely different thing altogether. I'd imagine the irony of labeling Hezbolla propaganda as "anti-semitic" is completely lost on most people.
Re: (Score:2)
Privacy of "celebrities" (Score:2)
Also, pe
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Depends on the celebrity. If you are talking about a media-whore (as many of them are) who milk the media for their own benefits, then I really aren't going to lose some sleep over them being hounded over the media-buzz they contrived to create. On the other hand, celebrities that keep to themselves and don't play the game deserve their privacy. This is mostly self-regulating due to the
a big problem with this... (Score:1, Interesting)
a huge advancement? (Score:1, Redundant)
http://www.cnn.com/exchange/ [cnn.com]
http://www.cbc.ca/news/photosubmit/ [www.cbc.ca]
This has lawsuit written all over it. (Score:1)
The continued marginalization of news media (Score:2)
I look forward to this going full circle, and wire services and news networks becoming completely obsolete in favor of citizens reporting the news to other citizens, devoid of heavy-handed corporate or political bias.
Brin's 2038 (Score:2)
We'll pay the price in entropy (Score:2)