BBC starts citizen journalism project in Brighton
In collaboration with the University of Brighton, Nokia and Ymogen, BBC Innovation is launching a month-long citizen journalism project in Brighton. It’s a multimedia project, meaning the participants will use video, still photography and text combined. Phones – Nokia Nseries multimedia computers – and a Garmin Etrex GPS device will be used by University of Brighton student reporters.
At Journalism, Ymogen’s CEO Mark Hardwick explains:
We’re trying to understand the different ways that you might combine a variety of media with location information in order to create engaging stories using mobile devices. This is an incredibly exciting project.
(via Beta Alfa)
I like what you’re doing. As I see it you’re not only encouraging people to speak through their mobile devices but to thoroughly learn their use with a real application. At the same time you’re giving them the dual focus of a location and the viewpoint of journalism which will result in a form of social network where all the content has relevance to each other. Therefore the result will be of more interest and value to all Internet users in your area. To make the end result higher in value and more creditable to the site viewers you should have an editorial moderator that will mentor your participants into better journalists and vet the post for accuracy. Truth has become the unfortunate victim resulting from the total freedom and anonymity of the Internet.