Fri, December 8th, 2006 by Miles
Thu, December 7th, 2006 by Chantal
Throughout modern history, new organizations have relied on citizen journalists to supplement images of news events regularly provided by the photojournalists they employ. Many of the most poignant images of major news events in recent years have been made by amateur photographers and regular citizens, often armed with little more than a camera phone. The larger news organizations are taking notice of this trend.
On December 5, 2006, Reuters.com and Yahoo! News began collecting news images submitted by the general public. Now anyone can upload images of news-as-it-happens onto the You Witness News website where they will be considered for use in features and articles on Yahoo! News. All submissions will appear on Flickr or a similar video-sharing site.
Editors for Reuters and Yahoo News will then organize the images to be used for various, relevant news stories. People will not be paid for use of their submissions. However, Reuters does plan to implement a system where they would pay for exclusive rights to images relating to larger news stories.
This brings up two conflicting arguments. On the one hand, it can be argued that the frequent use of citizen journalists will mark the demise of traditional professional photojournalism. Why should news organizations pay for a staff of photojournalists when they can get the images for free from anyone with a camera phone?
On the other hand, as Mike Johnston points out on The Online Photographer, the use of images and video from amateurs has been going on for decades and will continue, not to the detriment of professional photojournalism. Mike says:
Because everybody is literate and occasionally an amateur writes a good book, does that mean we no longer need book authors?...The fact is, good news reporting has always used primary source material. But having more primary source material hardly means we have less need for professional reporting.
What do you think?
You can read more about this project in the NYTimes, and check out Mike Johnston's article on his website.
(Posted with thanks to Chrys.)
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