Eliot Higgins, an unemployed British blogger with no military background, has become a crucial source of information about illegal weapons being used in Syria for both human-rights organizations and traditional journalists. Read more at paidContent »
How’s this for tearing things up? A big TV news agency is tapping citizen video journalists as producers, Reddit users as editors and YouTube as financiers, for a new online journalism channel. Read more at paidContent »
Could a mobile app have rooted out #FakeSandy storm images that ruffled so many feathers? Scoopshot thinks it can, but others say editors must rely on human research to validate UGC photojournalism. Read more at paidContent »
Glocal wants to become the Hulu for local news and entertainment content, and help local publishers earn more money than on YouTube. That’s ambitious – but it’s also a good reminder that online video isn’t always about the big hits that are popular everywhere. Read more »
Despite all the gloom in the newspaper business, which he says will likely still have to suffer more pain and possible bankruptcies, New York Times media writer David Carr says he believes that thanks to the internet we are living in a “golden age for journalism.” Read more »
When they think about competition, many traditional outlets still seem to look mostly at media players such as the Huffington Post or Buzzfeed. But the reality is that much of what is competing with journalism in the digital world are things we barely recognize as journalism. Read more »
Bambuser users may soon have a much bigger audience: The Swedish live streaming startup has partnered with Associated Press. The news organization will be able to add footage from citizen reporters all around the world its own work, and credit them properly. Read more »
Citizen journalism and social-media tools have made it easier to get information out of countries like Egypt and Syria, but in some cases these reports may not be true. Does that mean citizen journalism is unreliable? No. It just means we need to approach it differently. Read more »
News agencies that want to cover events happening in restricted parts of the world have had few options for licensing high-quality content. Cont3nt.com is trying to solve that problem, with a platform to discover and license videos shot by local professionals. Read more »
The firestorm of criticism that erupted over the New York Times public editor’s question about whether reporters should be “truth vigilantes” is a sign there is still a huge gap between what the mainstream media thinks its job is and what readers think. Read more »
Many traditional journalists see “citizen journalism” as a negative thing, an untrustworthy source of information that diminishes their role as gatekeepers of the news — but New York Times foreign correspondent and author Nick Kristof says that he sees the value of the phenomenon. Read more »
A new study of the way information flowed during the Arab Spring uprisings earlier this year paints a fascinating picture of how what some call “news as a process” works, and the roles bloggers, mainstream media and others play during a breaking news event. Read more »
The YouTube videos of a police officer using pepper spray on peaceful UC Davis protesters have gone around the world. The incident was captured by dozens of cameras, as the Occupy protests have become the birth place of a new citizen video journalism. Read more »
Libya is blocking access to YouTube, and border guards have started to frisk people for camera phones. Still, plenty of clips from within the country show up online, offering us a glimpse at a country in turmoil that has been off limits to traditional journalists. Read more »
Local TV station ABC7 has partnered with YouTube to use its YouTube Direct tools to collect videos from citizen journalists for its local news. The partnership comes as YouTube has expanded its capabilities to make it easier for users to submit videos to news organizations. Read more »
