The Vancouver-based participatory news service, NowPublic.com, has been getting a lot of media attention in Canada this past week.
It is mentioned in an article on the Canwest News Service on the protests over Tibet. Co-founder Len Brody set out his goals for the site:
Our job is to own the space and time between when an event happens and when it gets uploaded to the web and be at the location faster than anyone in the world.
In a separate article in the Vancouver Sun, owned by Canwest, co-founder Michael Tippett sought to dismiss the idea that sites like NowPublic.com would replace traditional newspapers:
Newspapers will always play a role in people’s reading habits, in their news diet. There’s a certain pleasure in reading a newspaper. I don’t take my laptop to bed.
But he added that “citizen journalism is important for the same reason a democratic society and a free market are important.”
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