Reuters and Yahoo! Enlist Camera Phones

eldavojohn writes "In a huge advancement of citizen journalism, Reuters and Yahoo! are asking average people to be journalists with their cell phones. I hope participants don't run the risks others have for photographing the police. You can expect to see these new photos being used at Yahoo! and Reuters.com starting tomorrow." From the article: "'People don't say, "I want to see user-generated content,"' said Lloyd Braun, who runs Yahoo's media group. 'They want to see Michael Richards in the club. If that happens to be from a cellphone, they are happy with a cellphone. If it's from a professional photographer, they are happy for that, too.' Users will not be paid for images displayed on the Yahoo and Reuters sites. But people whose photos or videos are selected for distribution to Reuters clients will receive a payment."

The BBC have been doing this for a while.

The BBC have been requesting user captured media [bbc.co.uk] since (I think) the July 7th bombings in London.


If you capture an unfolding event on camera or mobile phone, either as a photograph or video, then please send it to BBC News.

You can send pictures or video to [e-mail] or via mms by dialling [phone].

Please do not endanger yourself or others, take any unnecessary risks or infringe any laws.


That disclaimer is very important, the BBC does not want CNN reporters sending tapes from 2000 foot skydiving through a twister.
They also have a policy in place to pay people for certain images.

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The Sydney Morning Herald [smh.com.au] here in Australia has a similar thing at the bottom of every news story:

When news happens: send photos, videos & tip-offs to 0424 SMS SMH ([phone]), or email us.

Photos from a mobile phone these days with their 2MP or m

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Yep, another good idea finally makes it across the pond... :)

not the first

In a huge advancement of citizen journalism, Reuters and Yahoo! are asking average people to be journalists

I see they're taking FOX News' lead then. FOX has been asking average people to be journalists for years.

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As I recall, "journalist" was the one job that ranked lower then "politican" in most polls in terms of respect. After an entire adult lifetime of reading their output, I can see why this is so. Common people reporting the news would probably raise the ge

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What "news" will common people report?

I found phone-photos from the Lebanese equivalant of "Joe Sixpack" (let alone aid workers, etc.) during the last Israeli conflict to be quite interesting.

Re:not the first

Well, let's see how well CBS/ABC/NBC/CNN et al are doing: 1) Bush National Guard documents -- fake, 2) Downing Street Memos -- fake, 3) Jason Blair (NYT) articles -- fake. If Fox had been responsibile for any of these great examples of "journalism," they would have already been howled out of business. But of course, that's the beauty of a double-standard. Crucify your opponents over minutia while you skate on the real whoppers.

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Why must I be for CBS/ABC/etc. if I'm against Fox News? Every news channel is my "opponent" in this regard.

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Why must I be for CBS/ABC/etc. if I'm against Fox News? Every news channel is my "opponent" in this regard.

When most of the major malfeasance in journalism can be found outside of Fox News, it just seems kind of strange that someone would focus on Fox New

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It's like the saying... keep your friends close, but your enemies even closer ;)

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Because the prevailing attitude in America today is distilled to "If you're not with us, you're against us."

Absolute polarization is widespread these days in America: If you are at all critical of A, you are automatically labeled as a B-supporter, so they

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2) Downing Street Memos -- fake

Umm, no [wikipedia.org].

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In a huge advancement of citizen journalism, Reuters and Yahoo! are asking average people to be journalists

I see they're taking FOX News' lead then. FOX has been asking average people to be journalists for years.

ROTFL. Fox is, at best, in a distant sec

Glad to see this happening

This is a great way to get accurate and detailed photos of news events, especially those that take place quickly or happen in remote areas. Even with field offices all over the world, organizations like Reuters can't possibly have a photographer everywhere. When a newsworthy event takes place, chances are that someone with some capability to take a photo will be in the vicinity. I think the potential cash bounty for quality photos will encourage "citizen journalists" to participate.

Tornado sightings have worked this way forever. Bubba catches the twister on his video-recordin' machine, the local NBC affiliate pays him 100 bucks for the tape, and soon the whole country gets to see video of a funnel cloud snapping power lines a hundred yards away. CNN has recently been pushing a "Send, Share, See YOUR Stories on CNN" initiative, and now Yahoo and Reuters are jumping on the bandwagon. It's about time that the concept is catching on more broadly... I just hope it gets used for something more relevant than Britney flashing her hoo-ha.

Michael Richards is a bad example

Most comedy clubs have a policy of not allowing anyone to record the comedian's acts.

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Ummm....nothing. But it's typical comedy club policy. Probably to prevent bootlegging of the acts.

Fake Photos

I was getting ready to write a post on the dangers of fake pics and that I hoped there were safeguards in place to prevent this... but hey, I suddenly remembered that mainstream journalists have been doing this for awhile now, so no worries. Falsify away.

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Seiously, how many "Britney spotted naked" pictures will there be? Although, if they're supposed to look like they're from cell phone cameras, they're going to have to be run through the crappifying filter! Perhaps slightly more seriously, how many fake pi

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... I suddenly remembered that mainstream journalists have been doing this for awhile now, so no worries. Falsify away.

Why not? It will make it easier to get pictures to go with their fake news [bostonherald.com].

ignorant corporate hacks

My readon this: For the most part, people won't be paid for their effort, and when they are, Reuters will decide if, when, and how much.

So if the for-profit company that takes money from your effort is not paying people, why would ANYONE send them juicy information, the best and most timely photos? (Other than corporate spin and marketing...) These suits do not understand human motivation at all. While many community/corporate models do work well - they work when the people who contribute significantly get something significant back for their participation in the community.

Stop letting your creativity be yoked by the merchants.

The only possible reason for people to upload is an individul's desire for the story/photo to get out - which puts even more bias on the distorted, biased coporate news process. Now everyone is "fighting" for what news is real - in an arena where people will always lose to the larger corporate profit motive.

Why wouldn't you send it to groups like Indymedia [indymedia.org] or other groups, collectives and nonprofits that have ideals more in line with the interests of individuals? Why wouldn't you post it to your own flickr account, craigslist, or make a blog post about it yourself? All these tools are available to anyone who can get the API working to upload it to Reuters, and work more in the individual's interest.

We no longer need merchants to control creative expression.

CNN launched a 'thing' like this too a while back (iReport, video [youtube.com])and it was laughed off the airwaves. They wanted you to "be the reporter!" and not pay you for your effort - while the whole time they make money off the ads your reports support. If people have a great story - post the video online with a site that allows you to share revenue from traffic, and includes real rewards for creating the content to those people who really create it.

Re:ignorant corporate hacks

I dunno, but people contribute to Wikipedia and various open-source projects all the time, for which they don't get paid. Sometimes people (like RedHat) even make money re-selling your work. Heck, right here at Slashdot, the guys selling ads are profiting from your opinion expressed above.

It's a sense of community, I think. People put forth relatively small amounts of effort and get back rich content from the sum. The whole may be no more than the sum of the parts, but the sum is a lot more valuable to you than your part.

Re:ignorant corporate hacks

Last I checked Wikipedia was not a for-profit company. These guys are just trying to milk the mainstream for free labor and they know it. People who can break quality stories are often people who know the value of those stories. If I called Reuters or Yahoo to give them an exclusive story for something new and hot and they asked me to submit it for free with this new service I'd laugh at them and tell them I'll see what amount their competitors will offer me and how it probably won't have to be much to beat their offer of nothing.

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Advertise a telephone# for MMS or an email address. Once they establish the market (mass end user transfers) supply and demand will balance very quickly, it will be as easy as the first sentence.

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I will go to great lengths to help out my friends or community.
I will go to great lengths to make a quick buck for myself.
I will do nothing to help a corporation use my effort to make a quick buck for themselves, while i get nothing.

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My point is that by posting to Slashdot, you just did.

Re:ignorant corporate hacks

A lot of people will be doing this. Why?
Bragging rights.

"My photo was on [big news agency] - Just look here!"

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Yeah, that'll be helpful when it comes time to pay the mortgage. No money but hey, look at this, Reuters and Yahoo used my picture and didn't pay me. Whoopee!

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Just remember, Stephen Colbert [colbertondemand.com] said it first.

It's to be expected.

I seem to remember a certain 1991 event [wikipedia.org] which set off riots and a fairly major cultural shift, which would never have gotten out had there not been some bystander with a portable video camera handy. Since then tons of amateur videographers whipped out their camcorders whenever something newsworthy happened. Now we all have camera phones, so this is all just the natural evolution of that.

What Controls Against Staging/Faking?

Citizen Journalism is a Good Thing, but given Reuter's recent and well-publicized problems with staged photos and fraud with their own stringers [zombietime.com] (not to mention the recent allegations against AP over "fake" atrocities reported by dubious or non-existent sources) [newsbusters.org], what controls is Reuters going to put in place to ensure they aren't taken in again? How can we know that a picture of, say, Barak Obama flipping someone the bird, or Israeli soliders shooting a civilian, wasn't faked by a partisan with an axe to grind?

Given the numerous problems Reuters has had with its own Middle East reporting, what controls are they going to put in place to ensure that these Citizen Journalists aren't feeding them fake pictures?

Crow T. Trollbot

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Yes, this could be a major advance in journalism so long as Reuters executes well. Verification is essential (which is not tremendously difficult so long as it's made a priority) and consistently paying and paying well for items sent in will determine the

It's the radio station "request" model

Given the numerous problems Reuters has had with its own Middle East reporting, what controls are they going to put in place to ensure that these Citizen Journalists aren't feeding them fake pictures?

Pretty simple, I suspect. They'll use the model that US

Who ARE these people?

'People don't say, "I want to see user-generated content,"' said Lloyd Braun, who runs Yahoo's media group. 'They want to see Michael Richards in the club

Who are these people? And could we possibly get them all to congregate at a remote nuclear testing are

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You and me both. I'm heartily sick of the cult of celebrity, especially when applied to total non-entities who are famous for being famous.

Serenity now!

Lloyd Braun? Michael Richards? What is this, an episode of Seinfeld? Serenity now, insanity later.

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Ha! Apparently the Lloyd Braun on Seinfeld was named for this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Braun_(Seinfeld ) [wikipedia.org]

Lloyd Braun

You can't have an article mentioning Michael Richards and Lloyd Braun without some mention of procuring gum from Chinatown, can you?

Honest question

Honest question: why is this good, but traffic cams and telescreens bad?

Where is the line between "good for justice/democracy/etc" and "invasion of privacy?"

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They way groupthink inc. has it:
Government abusing regular people - evil, mostly because they can cover each other's backs quite well no matter who's at fault.
Regular people abusing regular people - equality.

Either way, you're still getting invaded. If you

The BBC Do This

The BBC have been requesting pictures and video from members of the public for some time now. They have a couple of dedicated numbers set up, and also encourage people to email things through the website. I suppose they stand more chance of getting that

Major problem with this

In a lot of Western countries it is assumed that there can be found a jury of people that haven't yet formed an opinion on some matter. Whether it is civil or criminal doesn't really matter, the issue is that whatever it is, they haven't heard about it.

What publishing cell phone camera photos and movies does is virtually eliminate the possiblity of finding anyone that hasn't been exposed to every possible detail, no matter what.

Another aspect of this is when an "eyewitness" account differs from the rather narrow view of the event presented by a camera. Which would be more likely to be believed? I suspect most people under 30 would unquestingly accept the camera view and people over 30 far more likely to give them equal weight if not be more likely to favor the human. Yes, human memory isn't perfect but neither is the interpretation presented by the cameraman.

And, it is very difficult to tell the difference in the "Internet Age" between something faked and the real thing in a photo when the time between it is taken and when it is old news is like 10 minutes. You either publish it immediately or it has zero value - because everyone else already put it on their web pages. The wire services, AP & Reuters, are having some pretty serious issues with this now, and it is likely just the beginning.

Oh yeah, that'll work.

So, on an internet where nobody knows you're a dog, "reputable" organizations will start posting non-traceable input as news??!?!?!!?!!!

Here, take a look at Green Helmet Guy [blogspot.com], the face of anti-semitic news from the Lebanon.

This is a chance for the S/N ratio on the internet to head to, what, minus infinity?

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the face of anti-semitic news from the Lebanon.

Indeed, that is text-book propaganda. However, so is calling it "anti-semitic". If anything, it's "anti-Israeli", which is a completely different thing altogether. I'd imagine the irony of labeling Hezbolla

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When I hear a mob chanting "Death to the Jews" in Arabic, something tells me that they aren't interested in who issued my passport.

Privacy of "celebrities"

I could see this as being a real cause for concern for privacy for celebrities. Celebrities are regular everyday people. I'd sure as hell get annoyed if a flock of morons was following me around with a cellphone or camera all day long. If some pro photogra

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Well, serious news agencies like AP and Reuters don't tend to report on the same stories that the tabloids would report on. "Britney flashes muff shocker" doesn't register as "news" for many agencies, so any submissions from the public along those sorts of

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I could see this as being a real cause for concern for privacy for celebrities. Celebrities are regular everyday people.

Depends on the celebrity. If you are talking about a media-whore (as many of them are) who milk the media for their own benefits, then

The continued marginalization of news media

With the eradication of the Fairness Doctrine [bsalert.com], it has been a slow decline in the integrity of journalism. The idea that wire services are now asking people to provide content for them is testimony to the pathetic state of affairs in journalism.

I look forw

Brin's 2038

You may recall in David Brin's book Earth, set in 2038 or so, the middle-aged and "old fogies" (i.e. us today in 30 years) have an unhealthy, obsessive, paranoid preoccupation with documentary surveillance (using the equivalent of cell phone cameras, but m

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I agree. These user-contributed images are intellectual property, and as such the users should be compensated for it. After all, who paid for the camera, the internet access to upload the images and so on?

It can get worse if such sites attempted to claim c