Reader generated content
Posted: February 17th, 2011 | Author: Wade | Filed under: General | 7 Comments »Reader generated content is an idea that had some media people quite excited when it emerged a few years ago. After all, it’s how the web’s richest companies made their money. But it never quite saw commercial success in the news industry as it did elsewhere and there are some very good reasons why that is.
There’s now a push to reinvigorate the concept with a new iPhone app that encourages readers to shoot and submit pictures to meet specific requests from participating newspapers. I don’t advocate this for a second and I’ll tell you why soon, but I do acknowledge entrepreneurship at a time when the print media could do with every bit of entrepreneurial thinking on offer. Only, it would be better to see it used for good instead of evil.
The concept of reader submitted photography is actually a very good one but it’s one that has a time and a place. Why wouldn’t you capitalise on the good fortune of a reader who happened to be in the right place at the right time with a camera, especially when the alternative is to offer your audience no picture at all? But here we also find the first problem: people who try to hoodwink you, deliberately and maliciously for their own amusement. Sometimes they succeed.
Every major news event generates a number of fake, doctored or just misrepresented pictures that are distributed through unsolicited means like Twitter and at times even find their way into print. We’ve seen fake tsunami photographs, the Haitian earthquake picture that wasn’t, and this one that purported to show the recent Cyclone Yasi off Queensland but had in fact originated a couple of years earlier. Countless such pranks are attempted but all it takes is for one to slip through and the damage is done. Then, try explaining to your readers why you were ever feeding them anonymously supplied journalism, completely on trust, in the first place.
If we were really to consider actively outsourcing routine assignments to the public, we would also need to accept that the burden of confirming the veracity of their work would be significant and not likely to be justified by the return. Likewise, and needless to say, quality would suffer as enormously as any other expertise transferred to laypeople would. It means sifting through many more haystacks in the hope of finding far fewer needles.
The workflow proposed under this system involves publishers posting a list for members of the public to select their assignments from. This is akin to emailing your competition a neat summary of what you’re putting in the paper the next day. It’s unthinkable.
Then there’s the money. Readers might be happy to email in the odd unsolicited picture now and again when they’ve crossed paths with something they feel is worthy, but when you’re asking them to pick up a camera and produce work-to-order, they’ll inevitably and rightly expect to be paid real money to do so. But the commercial basis for the user-generated model is the avoidance of labour costs, and these submissions are seldom worth paying for anyway.
So photographers need not get too wrapped up around the axels about any of this posing a meaningful threat to them. The obstacles that undermined the reader generated idea in the first place simply haven’t been overcome.
UPDATE: Tackable has posted a rebuttal on their blog in which they now deemphasise the assignment based model and choose to emphasise spot-news submissions instead (which, as I say above, is where the user generated concept works well). It’s through the questions they leave unanswered that they’re acknowledging many of the concerns laid out here. Their response also argues that professional journalists should resist putting themselves on a pedestal because ultimately they’re not that different to, or any more highly skilled than the next person. True, except of course that they’re accountable.
Thanks again for your thoughts on our work.
Over the past week, we’ve read a fair amount of negative feedback from photojournalists, who believe we’re launching a new photo wire, or a freelance photo brokerage. That’s simply not the case.
At the most basic level, you take out your iPhone, take a live photo of something you find visually interesting, and send that photo to a public map on Tackable. That map contains hundreds of live photos, giving you a look at everything happening in your city, right now. We’re a social network, not a photo wire.
This is an interesting concept for the public, and will eventually become a useful tool for journalists — just like every other newsgathering tool you use.
You don’t have to like us, but just don’t hate us. We’d like to partner with your paper in the future.
Cheers,
Luke
Tackable
Luke seems to be a little peeved, coz he didn’t come back to us, even he said so. Or he is just too busy.
I like your idea of taking Twitpic to the next level.
Best,
Thomas
Our post: http://www.pd-jkt.com/2011/02/13/grumpy-old-man-zorro-and-citizen-journalism-with-tackable-app-for-the-iphone/
The mainstream media is on a slippery pole of attempting any gimmick to gain readers attention. Do they care whom or what the source is? Do they care about the accuracy or veracity of what they are feeding the public? Answer to all these is probably not as long as it sells a few extra papers or increases their audiences for that moment.
Doesn’t it come down to crap in crap out? The future of the media – citizen journalist – heaven help us!