How Dare A Company Not Spy On Its Workers! >>
<< How The Google Boycott Backfired Bigtime
 tdicon 
The Jerk-O-Meter Seems To Be Pointing In The... >>
<< Another Day, Another Mobile Virus FUD Story
 | 

Wireless

by Carlo Longino

Thu, Aug 11th 2005 12:48pm





Now, We Wait

from the if-you-build-it-hopefully-they-will-come dept

A company that recently launched to sell average people's cameraphone photos to news outlets has signed up 1,200 potential paparazzi in a month -- but hasn't gotten any photos worth selling. This highlights one potential folly of citizen journalism efforts: they rely on (often untrained) citizen journalists. That's not to say that journalism is a high art to be practiced only the trained and experienced few, but any company looking to make money from everyday peoples' journalistic longings might want to invest in some training, too.

4 Comments | Leave a Comment

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments (rss)

(Flattened / Threaded)

  1.  
    identicon
    jdw242, Aug 11th, 2005 @ 1:39pm

    oh god; c'mon!

    camera phone pictures? WTF?
    Would you buy a camera phone pic?
    I wouldn't; my camera phone pics suck compared to my DSC-M1.

    What did they (realistically) expect to happen?

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Aug 11th, 2005 @ 2:52pm

    Re: oh god; c'mon!

    well, sometimes even a cameraphone pic is better then nothin at all so they do have a potential money maker here. But lets face it, only in extreme situations like the problems in london last month when it wasnt even physically possible to get a trained camera man to the scenes. Most news items nowadays can easily have journos at the scene within mins so public pics are useless

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  
    identicon
    sighs, Aug 11th, 2005 @ 2:58pm

    Re: oh god; c'mon!

    I don't know where you live, but in the UK, when London got bombed at the beginning of July, all we saw for days on the news and in the papers were fuzzy cameraphone videos and equally low res snaps from smoke filled tube (sorry subway) tunnels and newly open top buses. You may scoff at the idea but half our police force is wading through gigabytes of this junk trying to find something useful to help fight the war on terror!

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  
    identicon
    dorpus, Aug 11th, 2005 @ 3:26pm

    Really Ugly People

    News crews pick photo-genic people on the street for their articles. I remember that immediately after 9/11, there was a picture of an ugly Southeast Asian woman using her cell phone on the sidewalk near the WTC, but later editions sliced out that part of the picture. I've seen the same thing happen at other natural disaster coverage, where they edited out footage of people that looked too ugly.


     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


Add Your Comment

Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here
Get Techdirt’s Daily Email
Save me a cookie
  • Note: A CRLF will be replaced by a break tag (<br>), all other allowable HTML will remain intact
  • Allowed HTML Tags: <b> <i> <a> <em> <br> <strong> <blockquote> <hr> <tt>
How Dare A Company Not Spy On Its Workers! >>
<< How The Google Boycott Backfired Bigtime
 tdicon 
The Jerk-O-Meter Seems To Be Pointing In The... >>
<< Another Day, Another Mobile Virus FUD Story
 | 
Follow Techdirt
Flattr rss rss
A word from our Sponsors...
Sponsored Resource
Essential Reading
Techdirt Reading List
Techdirt Insider Chat

A word from our Sponsors...
Recent Stories

Wednesday

5:00pm: DailyDirt: Graduation Advice To Remember (1)
4:32pm: New Bill Would Stop Patent Trolls From Hiding Behind Shell Companies (10)
3:26pm: Eric Schmidt Still A Fan Of Figuring Out A Way To Erase The Past (12)
2:24pm: Chinese Hacks Of Google Database Of Surveillance Targets Highlight How Dumb Technology Backdoors Are (8)
1:20pm: Released Video From Silva Beating Shows His Last Moments; Video Of Actual Beating Still Missing (48)
12:17pm: AT&T Says You Can Use Any Video Streaming App You Want... Just As Soon As It Can Get The Meter Running (16)
11:14am: Reporters Find Exposed Personal Data Via Google, Threatened With CFAA Charges (46)
10:07am: New York Times Tells Startup It Can't Even Mention The NY Times (41)
9:12am: So It's Come To This: Seven High School Students Arrested For Throwing... Water Balloons (130)
7:50am: First Hand Account Of Judicial Smackdown Of Prenda In Minnesota (101)
More arrow
A word from our Sponsors...

Close

Email This