A piece on J-Source lays into NowPublic for reproducing content from mainstream media. Enticingly titled, The Revolution will be Plagarised, it argues that the citizens are failing us at NowPublic. As of 2 p.m., Sept. 11, nearly 60 per cent of the stories in the citizen-journalism site’s Canadian Election section consist of quoted material from other, largely traditional media outlets. The problem with this article is that it misunderstands what
PDF I’m pleased to say that a journal article on professional attitudes to user-generated content by myself and Neil Thurman of City University, London, has been published. The research paper, called A Clash of Cultures: The integration of user-generated content within professional journalistic frameworks at British newspaper websites, is published in October 2008 issue of Journalism Practice. The paper is available online, but it is behind a subscription wall. Here is
Image via Wikipedia The theme at this year’s AEJMC annual conference is transformation, taking account of the changes taking place in the media. While many panels look at specific issues such as blogging and multimedia journalism, a paper by David Ryfe and Donica Mensing at the University of Nevada in Reno suggests that the purpose of journalism may be changing, with participation becoming increasingly important. They asked whether journalism is
Vancouver-based participatory news site NowPublic.com has bought up Truemors, a rumor site launched by Guy Kawasaki in May 2007. According to CEO Len Brody, NowPublic will mesh Truemors content into its website: Truemorists are digging in the four corners of the web for the status of the rumor mill at any moment. It will drive leads to our members for stories going on around the world and give our readers
The BBC’s new Statements of Programme Policy has a revealing snippet about the attitudes of TV to user-generated content. On page 57 of this lengthy document (PDF), the broadcaster says: We will augment our news coverage with video, still images and messages submitted by viewers, where appropriate, in order to offer first-hand accounts and a wide range of views. We aim to make it as simple as possible for audiences
Guy Berger, head of the School of Journalism & Media Studies at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, was awarded a $630,000 Knight News Challenge grant for the News is Coming project. As he explains, the aim is to have local news reports disseminated through cellphones to help connect an all-black township in South Africa with the white population living in the urban center. [vodpod id=ExternalVideo.587296&w=425&h=350&fv=] (Shot on a Nokia
The state of journalism in Canada is coming under scrutiny in an event on Thursday May 29 in Toronto organised by the Canadian Media Research Consortium. The one-day event, entitled The Future of News, aims to “bring together the best minds in industry and media studies to consider some of the challenges posed by today’s media landscape”. The event aims to examine how audiences are changing, the impact of citizen
Hold the front page – citizen journalists can produce original news! This came out of research by Zvi Reich of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel presented at the ICA annual conference in Montreal on Saturday. He looked at three mainstream news organisations in Israel and compared them to the Israeli citizen journalism site, Scoop. What he found was that 52% of the material on Scoop were original news
Canadian TV network CTV is the latest to jump on the citizen journalism bandwagon with the launch of a site dedicated to user-generated content at MyNews.ctv.ca. A breathless news release from CTV headlined “Attention all Citizen Journalists!” told Canadians that: Now, anyone with a digital camera or video phone can contribute to CTV News. Beginning today, video footage and images from citizen journalists across the country will potentially be used
The citizen journalism beat has a new kid on the block in the shape of VancouverIAM. As you might have guessed from the name, it is a citmedia site about Vancouver, based in Vancouver. The site describes itself as: The destination for people who want to know what’s going on in Vancouver. It gives you the tools and support to become a video journalist, internet TV and film producer and