BBC starts GPS-based citizen journalism experiment

mocoNews.net: BBC Starts Citizen Journalism Meets GPS Experiment.

Time overlooks citizen media sites

Good point from John at open parenthesis about Time's Person of the Year story, published yesterday:

Where were the links to places like OurMedia, NewAssignment, The Independent Media Center, and the Center for Citizen Media?

What happened to the many seizing power from the few? Is it expecting too much from a mainstream media story about user contributed content that it would point the way towards something better than just America’s Funniest Videos without a decent editor?

Eyewitness journalists

Washington Post Foreign Service: Regular Folks, Shooting History. Digital Technology Makes 'Citizen Journalists' Out of Eyewitnesses Eager to Click and Post. (Photo of Imelda Marcos, transmitted by the AP)

The rapid rise of digital technology, which enables ordinary people almost anywhere to record images and post them quickly on the Internet, is changing the way the world witnesses history, not to mention the dependable misbehavior of celebrities. Events that once were recorded only by human memory may now endure in full, pixelated detail, available in seconds around the globe. ...

McClatchy buys citizen media sites

McClatchy Newspapers, my old employer, today bought two of my favorite citizen media sites, FresnoFamous.com and ModestoFamous.com, founded by Jarah Euston. The sites are in cities where McClatchy operates daily newspapers. Congrats, Jarah! (pictured above with moi)

Courts are asked to crack down on bloggers

USA Today: Courts are asked to crack down on bloggers. Excerpt:

Legal analysts say the lawsuits are challenging a mind-set that has long surrounded blogging: that most bloggers essentially are "judgment-proof" because they — unlike traditional media such as newspapers, magazines and television outlets — often are ordinary citizens who don't have a lot of money. Recent lawsuits by Banks and others who say they have had their reputations harmed or their privacy violated have been aimed not just at cash awards but also at silencing their critics.

"Bloggers didn't think they could be subject to libel," says Eric Robinson, a Media Law Resource Center attorney. "You take what is on your mind, type it and post it." ...

Connections, conversation is king

Bambi Francisco at AlwaysOn: Yahoo dispels first-mover myth.

It's not so much the aggregated or licensed content, or even the original content that's king anymore. User-generated content is king.

In the Internet era, it's not about getting millions to read articles from a few paid experts. It's about making millions of people volunteer experts. It's not about getting millions to watch one program with a few stars. It's about getting a few people to watch millions of programs with millions of stars.

Moreover, it's not just about getting users to express themselves, but providing the means to let users connect with each other. ...

Software for citizen journalists goes open source

Word comes that a publishing system, NewsCloud, was released today as an open-source media platform.

Trust in the age of citizen journalism

Tom Glocer's blog: Trust in the Age of Citizen Journalism. Speech given in Tel Aviv by Reuters chief executive Tom Glocer: The world we live in today is one in which everyone is a consumer, everyone a distributor, everyone an aggregator, everyone a producer. News organizations must realize everyone is both a potential partner and competitor. For too long the public has been a face without a voice; the Internet has changed all that. Thanks to MediaBistro for the pointer.

At Reuters we announced last week a groundbreaking agreement with Yahoo, parent of Flickr, to encourage amateur photographers to tag and submit their photographs to Reuters – to put them to work as super stringers.

For me the advantage of the Internet is just that. It’s about the return of the conversation, something we lost with the advent of mass broadcast communication. 

The ancient Greeks regarded dialogue as the most effective means of communication- a two way conversation – a Socratic dialog at its best.   The development of print, and more significantly television, dampened that conversation.  It replaced it with a one-way broadcast model.

The world we live in today is one in which everyone is a consumer, everyone a distributor, everyone an aggregator, everyone a producer.

We live in the era of the two-way pipe.

News organizations must realize everyone is both a potential partner and competitor. A 19-year-old sitting in a dorm room cranking out gossip, a well-established journalist blogging for her news organization, or a respected academic all have equal right to have a voice.  Whether they have an equal voice is another matter.

For too long the public has been a face without a voice, a simple and unheard recipient of media reports, television footage and news pictures. The internet has changed all that, giving access to all voices on all sides of any debate. ...

Good stuff.

Wikipedia founder remakes Web publishing economics

Reuters:

Free software is about to get freer.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said on Monday his for-profit company, Wikia Inc., is ready to give away -- for free -- all the software, computing, storage and network access that Web site builders need to create community collaboration sites.

Wikia, a commercial counterpart to the non-profit Wikipedia, will go even further to provide customers -- bloggers or other operators who meet its criteria for popular Web sites -- 100 percent of any advertising revenue from the sites they build.

Wow, this is big news — an important step forward for the nascent participatory media movement.

'Please don't call it Citizen Journalism'

NowPublic, the grassroots media site out of Vancouver that enlists people to share their newsworthy photos, unveiled a very cool new look today. Tagline: fresh, crowd-powered media. (Disclosure: I'm on their Advisory Board.)

I met for a coffee the other day with co-founder Michael Tippett, who flew down from Vancouver for some meetings in the Valley. Also videotaped him, but for the moment I can't get it off my camera phone. Mike just penned the following, which I agree with:

Please don't call it Citizen Journalism

When you build a bookshelf you don't think of yourself as a citizen carpenter - you just need a place to put your books.   The same is true for news.  When I tell a friend about something I saw while walking to work I don’t imagine myself sitting in front of a teleprompter.  I am telling a story because I want to express myself.  To think of people who have something to say as journalists is the wrong starting point.  Sharing your photos, videos, stories and reading lists are natural impulses.  Journalism has nothing to do with it.  More often than not people are sharing what they know because it's fun.  Good journalism through fun … that's our secret motto.  Shhhh, don’t tell anyone they’re actually doing journalism.