Eye witness accounts – a natural choice for newsdesks to embrace citizen media
Yahoo and Reuters are asking for photos and videoclips from eyewitnesses in a new joint project called You Witness.
“There is already a lot of quality amateur journalism being created by our users,” said Scott Moore, head of news and information at Yahoo Media Group. “Yahoo needed a more efficient process for soliciting and publishing user- contributed photos and video.”
In Sweden both the two tabloids, Aftonbladet and Expressen, as well as tv news are asking for news tips and photos/videos from their readers and viewers.
Eyewitness photos or videoclips filmed by bystanders at big news events certainly are citizen media, but can it be called citizen journalism? Maybe if you start asking other witnesses what they’ve seen. In my view, the act of journalism needs to have some kind of journalistic intent.
Ordinary people have appeared in the witness role in established media for ages, so there’s nothing new there. What’s new is that instead of having to go to the scene of the event, newsdesks can now ask people to send in the accounts to them directly, and get images from the event as well.
(via Beta Alfa)
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