[…] more on the impact of how Youtube is impact­ing the world of cit­i­zen jour­nal­ism, check out this inter­view with Olivia Ma, Youtube’s man­ager of News & […]

While I’m happy to see YouTube spread­ing the good word about cit­i­zen report­ing and help­ing to make it a more accept­able source of news, I have con­cerns of the way keep­ing ama­teur con­tent free can do noth­ing but devalue the prod­uct of non “pro­fes­sion­als”. If con­tent is deemed news­wor­thy enough for a media house to pub­lish it, and here I’m talk­ing about the news pub­lish­ers using YouTube direct con­tent, then that in itself should deter­mine that the footage is of con­sid­er­able worth. Why should the pro­ducer of this con­tent not get pay­ment AND recog­ni­tion for their out­sand­ing or exclu­sive content?

I just started work­ing with a French site that has been offer­ing a ser­vice sim­i­lar to YouTube direct for over 3 years now. This site, Citizenside.com, has cul­ti­vated an inter­na­tional com­mu­nity of ama­teur reporters and offers its mem­bers’ con­tent for sale to thou­sands of media clients around the world (they work with Agence France Presse and so have access to its clien­telle through its Image­Fo­rum). That’s right, they sell the con­tent, and they give the con­trib­u­tors up to 70% of the sale price.

They also have devel­oped sophis­ti­cated tools to aid in the val­i­da­tion of uploads, another thing YouTube Direct has cho­sen not to offer. Cit­i­zen­side sells their whole plat­form with all these tools to news pub­lish­ers who wish to involve their readers/spectators/etc… in the report­ing of the news.

It lets them build a whole online com­mu­nity for the audi­ence to share news related images, putting read­ers in con­stant inter­ac­tion with each other and the pub­li­ca­tion, all the while within the domain of the pub­lisher. And, per­haps the best part, pub­lish­ers have first rights to all their mem­bers con­tri­bu­tions. If another pub­li­ca­tion wants to use some con­tent, they must pur­chase the rights and the sale is split evenly between the con­trib­u­tor, the news orga­ni­za­tion they con­tributed to, and Citizenside.

This is opposed to the YouTube direct model where con­trib­u­tors upload to YouTube and have lit­tle or no inter­ac­tion with a sin­gle news orga­ni­za­tion. Then their con­tent can be used again and again, with­out them receiv­ing any renumeration.

I’m glad YouTube is in the mar­ket now because it means this sec­tor is gow­ing to gain con­sid­er­able vis­i­bil­ity, but I hold firmly that there are def­i­nite draw-backs to the YouTube direct model, both for con­trib­u­tors and news pub­lish­ers. And so I urge any­one inter­ested, cit­i­zen or cor­po­ra­tion, to look closely at the alter­na­tives: Citizenside.com and their plat­form the Reporter Kit (reporterkit.com)

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