Yahoo's Stab at Community Journalism
Disclaimer: I'm not a big fan of community journalism. Sure, there's an argument to be made about having citizen journalists using their cellphones, Blackberrys, PDAs, etc. to “report” the news as it happens but it's not really news as much as raw material that real news organizations can squeeze some snippets of value from. So far, community journalism has been, at best, disappointing. Dan Gilmour tried to make a go of it with BayoSphere but it fizzled out despite his best efforts.
Despite the lack of traction, Yahoo and Reuters have jumped into the citizen journalism market with a service called YouWitnessNews that will user-generated content on Yahoo's news site while Reuters will distribute the content to newspapers, magazines and Web sites. “This is looking out and saying, 'What if everybody in the world were my stringers?' ” said Chris Ahearn, president of the Reuters media group.
To be honest, I don't think big media organizations can effectively do citizen journalism. Why? I don't think citizens feel an enormous affinity or loyalty to large conglomerate such as Yahoo or Reuters. Sure, there's the glory of seeing your content within a Yahoo or Reuters story but I don't see that as a sustainable or vibrant activity.
This isn't to suggest there's no room for citizen journalism to thrive. A good example is NowPublic.com, a Vancouver-based start-up that has steadily grown its traffic and the number of contributors. NowPublic has a chance to thrive because it's a small player dealing with individuals so there's a bond that a Yahoo or a Reuters can't attain.
