This YouTube video was first added in
January 08 and relates to the flooding in the north of England that
happened previously. The short video discusses how citizen journalism
and citizen contributed media played an important part in keeping the
local community informed. It as first shown at a citizen journalism
conference at Leeds University.
Bloggers still face arrest in many
countries around the work according to the annual report by the
University of Washington. Many detained for exposing human rights
abuses or criticising governments.
Since 2003, 64 people have been arrested for publishing their
views on a blog, says the University of Washington annual report.
In 2007 three times as many people were arrested for blogging
about political issues than in 2006, it revealed.
More than half of all the arrests since 2003 have been made in
China, Egypt and Iran, said the report.
West Africa is the target of EWAN, the news agency that encourages
the people of that region to become active Citizen Reporters. The
countries that this site covers include; Benin, Burkina Faso,
Cameroon, Cape Verde, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory
Coast, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra
Leone and Togo.
Here is a snip from the about page...
The Enterprise West Africa News Agency website has been
established to assist people in West Africa become ‘Citizen
Reporters’ and provide a news gathering platform for current and
relevant news.
The EWAN Agency aims to represent the stories and photographs
received in a professional and unbiased way, and to accurately
portray the West Africa region to the international community.
Through the truthful portrayal of the people and locations
reported we shall endeavour to dispel the international ignorance
that surrounds West Africa.
We welcome comments from all the Citizens of West Africa.
Another site added to our search engine
is CyberJournalist.net. This is a news gathering network that also
has a job listing feature as well.
The site offers tips, news and commentary about online journalism,
citizen’s media, digital storytelling, converged news operations
and using the Internet as a reporting tool. CyberJournalist.net
highlights examples of online journalism with the aim of recognizing
those who do great work and helping those who don’t. The site also
explores how technology is affecting journalism, with an emphasis on
how the Internet can help all journalists better do their jobs.
CyberJournalist.net welcomes and incorporates tips, comments and
other contributions from readers.
It seems to be aim more at the
traditional journalist but mixed with user content. Interesting mix.
Farhad Manjoo has a book out called,
“True enough: learning to live in the post-fact society”. The
book, “argues that new communications technologies are loosening
the culture's grip on what people once called "objective
reality."
Robin Raskin
appeared to be a stay at home mom offering warnings on how
pornography was making it's way on to Apple iPods.
“...On
Pittsburgh's Fox affiliate, WPGH Channel 53, Raskin called the iPod
one of the "scariest" gifts of the season. The ABC station
in Columbus, Ohio, featured Raskin's warnings as part of a report by
Kent Justice, a correspondent who produces a regular segment called
"On Your Side." Justice told viewers, "If you didn't
know it, now prepare for it: Hundreds of Web sites are selling
iPorn."
Nine stations aired Raskin's warnings. Her segments had the look
and feel of ordinary local news: Super-coifed anchors offer alarmist
assessments of everyday objects, story at 11.
But something here was amiss. In addition to panning the iPod,
Raskin used her time on TV to push "safer" holiday tech
gifts, including products made by Panasonic, Namco and Techno Source.
These weren't unbiased reviews. The local stations that featured
Raskin were fully aware that the three companies had hired her to
pimp their products during news appearances.
There are not exactly a lot of
community run news agencies in the UK, in fact Citizen Eye based in
Leicester could well be the first. John Coster setup the agency
following a meeting of the Black Minority Ethnic (BME) Citizens Jury
held in 2006. The site is doing very well and feeding community news
to community run websites.
Here is what the about page says about
the site...
The Citizens’ Eye Community News Agency website
has been established to enable people in Leicester and Leicestershire
to become ‘Citizen Reporters’ and provide a news gathering
platform for current and relevant news.
We aim to present the stories and photographs received in a
professional and unbiased way, and to accurately represent all
communities.
In our portrayal of the people and locations reported, we shall
strive to dispel much of the ignorance that erodes community
cohesion.
We welcome comments from all the Citizens of the City and County.
Community news through the Citizens’
Eye…Reporting by the People
The site itself looks very
professional, well designed and easy to navigate. There are many
sections including video's, events, columns, resources and 'your
community'.
Citizen Eye is a good example of a
local 'citizen contributed' news gathering, focusing directly on the
community it is serving. Many more of these are needed for the UK
Speaking at DNA 2008, in Brussels
today, Chris Press told delegates that CNN launched the standalone
beta site to accommodate the citizen journalism content it was unable
to publish on CNN.com or use in television news.
"The aim
was to create a separate community for our reporters and then enable
the site to develop its own personality and functionality," he
said.
"People can create personal profiles, they can make
comments on other people's posts, they can tag and vote on posts,
link extensively to other sites like Facebook and Digg.
The site seems to be in beta and to be
honest it looks a lot like other video sharing sites. Hopefully the
content will make it stand out.
Two new sites have been added to our
search engine. The first is Digidave.org, David Cohn writes about, “the people,
technology, theory and practice of Citizen Journalism”. Thats where
I found the second site, Bleacher Report.
Bleacher Report calls itself, “the
open source sports network”. Sports reports written by citizen
journalists. It has just come out of beta and looks to be a good
site. Small snip from their about page...
Bleacher Report is where the sports bar meets the press box, the
place where fan-journalists create and critique high-quality sports
analysis.
Technology has leveled the sports media playing field, and now
more than ever before, sports fans around the world have the ability
and inclination to be sports pundits. It's Bleacher Report's mission
to give them the skills and tools to do just that.
You won't find "unbiased" coverage at Bleacher
Report—and that's the point. Every contribution bears the stamp of
its writer's personal convictions.
Added today to the CitizenPress Search engine is SACRN.com, the South Asian
Citizen Reporters Network. The website has stories contributed by
writers from places like Bangladesh, Pakistan and India. From the
email sent to me from the website team...
South Asian Citizen Reporters Network. A mission to make the South Asian Community closer and stronger. A common platfrom where the South Asians can express their feelings, opinions, views, culture , politics and more on. A road to friendship.
The about page has more info but I would like to highlight one paragraph particularly...
For me, it's no longer just a case of filing stories but rather documenting history for future generations of South Asians. I believe my duty is to do what I can as a frontline journalist and that it would be better to give my life rather than languishing in a refugee camp at the mercy of the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). I have observed the appalling conditions borne by Afghan refugees in camps here."
Jason Lee Miller of WebPro News is
covering yet again the possible demise of the newspaper. This is a
subject that has been floating around for a while now.
Jason does point out that newspapers do
have life left in them, local papers are doing well and making a
profit.
The print-is-dead
argument is a bit of a straw man because the scarecrow is still
awaiting the (tech) wizard to give it life. Fact is, people are still
buying newspapers. Fact is, they're still making money, especially
small local papers, even if it's less money as the market changes.
That means layoffs, and it means some publications with too much
overhead shut down.
But dead implies extinction, and I think it might be better to
look at it through an evolutionary lens. That is, print must evolve,
as journalism must.
