citizen

Let's Twitter a reaction to the overreaction to...Twitter

Each time our little world suffers a disaster, man-made or otherwise, count on the usual suspects to rush to their keyboards and pound out yet more bloviation about the existential importance of Twitter to our 24 x 7 ecosystem.

Before some of you jump ugly on me, let me hasten to mention that I've long found Twitter to be extremely useful. But how long before we can move past this "wonder of Twitter" moment? An earthquake in China, the Mumbai massacre, war in Gaza--Twitter's proved itself as a tool to report and comment on breaking news. … Read more

CNET News Daily Podcast: Steve Fossett's undersea secret

In addition to a legacy of adventure and entrepreneurship, Steve Fossett leaves behind a top secret project he'd been working on. He had bought a highly advanced underwater submersible he hoped would take him to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, lower than any point on Earth humans have gone. Reporter Daniel Terdiman joins today's podcast to talk about the project and where it goes from here.

Apple is strongly denying a rumor posted on CNN's iReport page that Steve Jobs suffered a heart attack this morning. iReport is a citizen journalism section of CNN, where people … Read more

Arianna Huffington on the future of journalism

The (fabulous) "Communities Dominate Brands" blog points at a Guardian video interview with Arianna Huffington on the future of news journalism. Not too surprisingly, Huffington's view on traditional news reporting is not too rosy - in fact, she predicts a slow but inevitable demise.

I like her line on mainstream media vs. blogs: "Mainstream media have an attention deficit disorder, blogs have an obsessive compulsive disorder."

Team debuts electronic-hacking how-to videos at HOPE conference

NEW YORK--Want to know how to build your own cell phone charger? How about putting an old-fashioned pay phone in your home to make voice over Internet calls?

A team of do-it-yourself technology gurus are creating a video series that will show you how to hack everyday gadgets to get more--and novel--uses out of them.

Limor Fried, who owns the Adafruit Industries electronics building business, and Phillip Torrone, senior editor at Make Magazine, are calling their series "Citizen Engineer." They debuted it at the Last HOPE conference here on Friday.

The video series demonstrates how to create the … Read more

AllVoices blends traditional media, citizen journalism

Citizen media start-up AllVoices, a global community that lets users contribute news and commentary by cell phone or online, moves from beta to the public newsroom on Thursday.

"My goal is to create the first true people's media company, where 6 billion people on the planet can share their news from wherever they are," said Amra Tareen, founder of San Francisco-based AllVoices.

The overshadowing feature on the AllVoices site is a world map that shows red, clickable dots on the location of an "event," as AllVoices calls a news report. The map allows users to … Read more

CNN's citizen journalism site iReport goes live

As we wrote on Monday, CNN's citizen journalism pet project iReport was due to get a site of its own. Today the service finally went live as iReport.com, and is already filling up with user content both old and new.

iReport's site has a lot in common with YouTube, showing off a grouping editor-selected videos (and photos) on the top of the page alongside a queue of the latest news content that's been uploaded by users. Each iReport user gets their own page with a listing of their uploaded photos and videos. Similar to Current, content is marked to show if it's been featured on CNN's televised or Web news reporting. adding incentive for others to click on it.

In addition to hosting any news story videos uploaded by users, iReport dishes out assignments to fledgling videographers and photo journalists. On top of the list is the 2008 Presidential elections, alongside weather reports, the ever popular "offbeat images", as well as "stories from Second Life," Linden Lab's MMORPG. Users can upload up to 10 videos and videos at a time, with each one taking up to 100MB in size.

Interestingly enough, the videos on iReport.com cannot be embedded on third party sites, although there are links to share it on five major social bookmarking and news services. Users also have the option of making the file downloadable, letting others grab it to play on their PCs or portable media devices. Syndication (albeit direct) is the name of the game.

In the future the service plans to increase the ties between stories, as well as where users are reporting from by integrating world maps. Already there is a "more on this story" feature that groups together content by assignment. The service also employs tags and a "newsiest" feature which "combines freshness, popularity, activity, and ratings" in an algorithm not unlike the ones found on social news sites like Digg and Reddit.

More screenshots after the break. … Read more

National Press Club targets citizen journalists

The National Press Club, a 100-year-old professional club for journalists, aims to recruit new online-media members through a partnership with Helium.com, a hub for citizen journalists. The deal is expected to be announced on Tuesday.

In terms of new media, the partnership is a first for the NPC and part of an overall strategy to update its image, including new renovations to its Web site. Several years ago, the NPC recognized the blogosphere by changing its constitution so that online writers could more easily apply for membership. With its Helium partnership, NPC is trying to extend its reach to … Read more

Report: CNN citizen journalism site close to launch

CNN is close to expanding its "iReport" user-generated reporting initiative into a separate Web site, MediaWeek wrote Monday.

The new site, to be hosted at iReport.com, will be a repository for user-submitted news content--video, audio, and photos. Visitors can navigate through categories of news (like sports, weather, and politics), rate content, and embed it elsewhere on the Web. Contributors will be able to create profiles, and regulars can build up individual followings. As for filtering, the new site will be moderated once content has already been posted to the site; this is a change from CNN's … Read more

A license to blog?

On Thursday, David Hazinski posted a column on the Web site of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution suggesting that "unfettered 'citizen journalism' (is) too risky." He points out that the online medium creates an opportunity for anyone to provide informational content, but that this new venue is prone to inaccuracies and hearsay. He argues that so-called citizen journalism "isn't journalism at all, and it opens up information flow to the strong probability of fraud and abuse."

In his article, Hazinski suggests that unless the news industry acts now to regulate amateur-professional journalism, it will be "just a matter of time before something like a faked Rodney King beating video appears on the air somewhere." In his defense, a similar scenario did play out over three years ago when Benjamin Vanderford, a San Francisco resident, produced a fake video depicting his own beheading at the hands of Islamist extremists; then again, it was a publisher from the establishment press, William Randolph Hearst, who is credited with helping catalyze the Spanish American War through manufactured news. Hearst told a reporter, "You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war," and history indicates that he may have done just that.

… Read more