there's precious little authoritative advice around on good practice for citizen journalists, so to try to help find the appropriate answers to these and many other questions, we're developing a publicly available resource.where
But we will be setting out how we - the BBC - see some of these issues and what we think is good practice, even if others disagree.
Prowse had delivered such a public service after all. I started to wonder whether his secret filming was really in the public interest. Was it possible he had abused an important trust that must exist between journalists and politicians in a democratic society? Might it be that his underhand techniques, if repeated on a wider scale, would paradoxically have the effect of making politicians less prepared to speak frankly to journalists, and even, in the long-run, less accountable?
writes Bob Groeneveld,
The trouble with citizen journalism on the Internet - and the reason newspapers will survive this onslaught, just as they did the predictions of doom and disaster meted out by radio and television - is threefold: quantity, quality and regularity, each intertwined with the others.
I'd say their chances of acquiring significant volumes of content with commercial value -- where value is largely driven by timeliness -- are slim to zero,It's hard to get sufficient awareness to stand even the remotest chance that the next punter to witness a newsworthy incident will have heard of Demotix, and know how to submit a photo or video quickly...Demotix (or Scoopt in its day, or any similar site) will always score well when they get a big hit -- but otherwise?"
Demotix will have to move beyond being a destination site for citizen photos and put itself where amateurs will be taking the shots and uploading them.
Its twist is that it encourages and enables anyone to be a reporter and uses an in-house system to rate would-be journalists on popularity and credibility.
Allvoices, which is operating on $4.5 million in funding from Vantage Point Venture Partners, has started paying its most popular reporters. They can earn anywhere from 25 cents to $2 per thousand page views.
Contributors are free to post almost anything. Credibility is rated by people who read postings and by the in-house algorithm, which is designed to help measure postings against traditional media and other sources.
The first local modules are 24 linked through the Kidderminster Shuttle and will be followed by six other titles in the Stourbridge News, Halesowen News, Dudley News, Bromsgrove Advertiser, Redditch Advertiser, and Droitwich Advertiser, in the coming months.
Re Lindsay Duncan's appalling turn in Margaret (BBC2). She was repetitive, robotic and android-like - a sub-Harold Pinter leftie. Had she mixed herself up with her script for a coming Doctor Who? She was truly embarrassing. Best raspberry, surely?
David Smith, Grimsby
Instead of relying on the major news outlets to get the news out of Gaza, many people are using the Internet to tell their version of the story, and that means a lot of graphic and unfiltered images and video circulating through emails and sites like YouTube and iReport.writes Michael Martin over at NPR.
Approximately 60 positions have been eliminated in the company's three U.S. offices, and approximately 30 new positions created Many of those whose positions were eliminated have been placed in the new positions. Current will have approximately 410employees
the more traditional 30-minute programs that have long dominated television programming across all channels
These changes result from the development of a new, innovative programming strategy built around eight cross-platform channels, including news, comedy, music, and technology, slated to premiere in the first quarter of 2009," the statement detailed. "Current's new programming strategy expands upon its pioneering use of viewer-created content to include additional opportunities for participation, creating a far more viewer-influenced network, and further unifies the company's online and TV platforms by having each Web channel paired with a companion TV showsaid the Company's statement
The day we just put those up without any questioning of whether that’s right or not is the day we’re in very serious trouble.
“It’s gone through all the filters that our journalism would have gone through. It’s quite labour intensive. We’ve another arm of our newsgathering operation – it can ultimately add to the richness of what we do, but we shouldn’t take it lightly.”
I’ve always been a champion of citizen journalism, but recently I realized that, when the chips are down — when it’s less than two weeks out from The Most Important Election of Our Lifetime — I always turn to the pros. For me, the best analysis of the election is being done by people who do it for a living.
hasn’t had much impact on the narrative of the race.
If I were to do an inventory of the material that appears on my blog, I’d estimate that a good third of it is reader-?generated, and a good third of my time is spent absorbing readers’ views, comments, and tips. Readers tell me of breaking stories, new perspectives, and counterarguments to prevailing assumptions.
It is important to ask why citizen journalism is taking off. A recent example of a burning local issue in Brighton was a trial of communal wheelie bins; rich people didn't want them outside their posh houses taking up parking spaces - renters with small flats wanted communal bins so the seagulls couldn't throw rubbish all over the road.
There was extremely limited coverage about this in the Argus and little room for discussion - so someone started a dedicated web forum and, for the most part, an extremely positive, articulate debate followed - including contributions from the councillor in charge of the trial
Bottom line - in aggregate, citizens journalists out-performed their professional counterparts getting news out faster, offering more details, and better images and videos. They also made more mistakes and had a high noise to signal ratio. Mainstream media were slow off the mark and while they depended on the citizen journalists, they failed to make the most of the possibilities that material offered.
The Internet,, has made journalists of all of us. Where once we might have kept a private diary by our beds, we now put our thoughts up online, disseminating them to as many strangers as we can possibly induce to take an interest in our musings.adding that
Frontline reporting and investigative work, the last bastions of the traditional news organisations, are now no longer the preserve of the so-called Fourth Estate. Of course, the mobile phone has turned tourists into camera-wielding correspondents at scenes of environmental disaster. It has transformed night-clubbers into paparazzi.
newspaper businesses are investing heavily in their journalism and that their websites have the "depth, quality and marquee names" missing from other areas of the net. As more challenging content is produced on specialist sites, will consumers head back to more familiar brands in an attempt to verify information?
The acting US CENTCOM Commander Lieutenant General Martin E Dempsey has said that US would enhance intelligence sharing and close cooperation with Pakistan army in war against terrorism and extremism.
AS AN aged hack with attitude, I tend not to pay too much attention to this modern trend of newspapers inviting readers to give their views online. But I do scan the opinions expressed about my own articles.and points out that
I am sure most of the posters (as they are called) on the Herald websites are in the tradition of the erudite, knowledgeable, insightful and witty letter-writing readers. It is just that some of the contributors to the electronic forums fall far below this standard.
many contributions on the message boards are reminiscent of those letters written in capital letters with green and purple ink. In the old days, journalists had the option of consigning these missives to the bin.
In the new age of instant communication, this appears not to be a choice. The journalists are no longer in charge of the asylum
Jews who support Israel are "false Jews", Condoleezza Rice is an "Aunt Jemima on the Bush plantation" and Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe is no worse than that of Ian Smith. These are just some of the views that can be found on the Guardian's Comment Is Free website.
the Telegraph's position is that readers should be free, within the law, to express their views, the Guardian's censors meanwhile eliminate as many as one in ten posts, which they consider to be unsavoury.
