Citizen journalism

Fernando Ferreira

At a time when traditional media, knowing that they will never have the ‘gift of ubiquity’, are seeking to encourage their readers to film, photograph and tell their own stories, YouTube has announced a relaunch of their citizen news channel, YouTube Direct.
Most major TV news organisations have seized upon the citizen journalism phenomenon, with networks such as CNN, Fox News and CBS regularly encouraging users to submit mobile phone videos or eyewitness reports of news happenings via the Internet. You Tube adds something new to that equation and lets these organisations tap into YouTube’s massive user-base.
According to MediaWeek, the service is an open source platform that any interested news site can tap into and begin soliciting content from its users.The system is currently being trialled The Huffington Post, NPR.com, Politico.com and the Web sites for the San Francisco Chronicle and some Boston television stations.
The platform allows news sites to easily add YouTube Direct to their websites, start requesting specific content from users, (such as eyewitness videos of the most recent car bomb or plane crash) and choose which clips to add to their own sites.
“Citizen journalism is one of the most interesting phenomenon on YouTube, with Hurricane Katrina and last year’s US election as examples. But news organisations have had a hard time tapping into that. Videos are hard to find, verification can be tough and there is not really a great way on the site to target contributor. This is about giving our news community something they are asking for”, Steve Grove, head of news and politics at YouTube said.
However, You Tube Direct is not a “new kid on the block”. Citizenside, a small young company based in Paris, has been doing the same thing for some years now but doesn’t carry a giant brand on their project, unlike YouTube.
Citizenside is an intermediary between the public’s photos and videos, and the worldwide media, partly owned by AFP.
Another twist in traditional media has been the 11th European Newspaper Awards winner, Portuguese newspaper “i”, who persuaded the jury through its special innovative approach, which includes a citizen journalism section.
“Newly established, the newspaper can start full of energy. It is precisely this that makes ‘i’ fascinating in all fields: Photography, page layout, alternative types of journalistic articles and innovative sections, completely focusing on the power of new ideas. All in all, a newspaper is evolved quintessentially, an all-round innovation.”
Reports that television as we know it is dying may be strengthened by these new media methods. Some say that with Google’s purchase of YouTube for US$1.65 billion and Murdoch’s acquisition of MySpace for US$580 million and with reports saying that Google’s advertising revenue will surpass that of the UK’s main commercial TV channels, it’s not that the Internet is killing television but that the Internet is changing into television.
In the future will we abandon our televisions all together and stream television solely over the Internet? If that’s true, television isn’t dying, it’s just being replaced by another means of communication – perhaps one that is more reliable and capable of delivering everything we want and more.