Boost for citizen journalism
2007-07-30 12:09
San Francisco - NowPublic announced on Monday that the fast-growing citizen journalism website has scored $10.6m in financing to fuel its
drive to become the world's largest news agency.
The Vancouver-based start-up says it is growing at a rate of 35% monthly and has nearly 120 000 contributing "reporters" in more than 140 countries.
In part of a trend referred to as "citizen journalism", NowPublic lets anyone with digital cameras or a camera-enable mobile telephones upload images or news snippets for dissemination via the internet.
Time Magazine lists NowPublic among its top 50 websites of 2007.
"I promise you, in 18 months NowPublic will be, by reach, the
largest news agency in the world," start-up co-founder Len Brody told
AFP.
'Changing the news business'
"The most exciting thing for us is this started as an experiment in
a garage behind a house and we are breaking stories and changing the
news business."
The financing is led by Rho Ventures in the United States and
Canada.
Uses for the money will include ways to reward people that upload
stories or images, and developing a system to "geo-locate" contributors
so they can be found if they are in range of developments deemed
newsworthy.
"We are moving to geo-locating people so we can do some cool stuff,"
Brody said.
"For example, if there is a bomb in a subway station in London or a
virus breaks out in Google's cafeteria and media can't get their fast
enough we can identify people on the scene already and get their
content," Brody said.
Contributors own stories they post on NowPublic, which does not pay
for submissions.
"This is really going to help us start compensating those folks,"
said Brody.
Partnerships
NowPublic is "putting the pedal to the metal in partnerships" with
newspapers, magazines, television networks and news wire services,
according to Brody.
NowPublic was posting pictures from a deadly cyclone strike in Oman
in June by the time the region's Associated Press bureau chief was
setting out from home to cover the story, Brody said.
NowPublic contributors filed reports from inside London's Heathrow
Airport during a 2006 terrorism lockdown and from the US Gulf Coast
when it was pounded by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
"This isn't YouTube with video of guys doing pranks in their dorm
rooms," said Brody. "This is real stuff; real news. More and more
people are seeing more and more things, carrying mobile devices, and
that creates a new army."
Participatory journalism is expected to influence traditional news
operations as reporters get tips or ideas from people online or respond
to news broken by people in the right places at the right times.
"We become the early warning system," Brody said.
"Breaking news will be owned by organisations like NowPublic, while
the analysis side will be owned by AFP and other organisations. That is
the big change we are making."