Among most of the U.S. and European citizen-journalism ventures that
I’m acquainted with, the idea of paying citizen reporters is not on the
table. South Korea’s Ohmynews.com
pays a modest fee to its citizen reporters based on quality of the
submissions. But for the most part, the thinking is that reporting by
members of the public is something they do for the satisfaction alone.
Now comes word of some innovation from South Africa. The website reporter.co.za
from Johnnic Media solicits citizen reporting and pays for good stuff
— grading news contributions into gold, silver, and bronze, and paying
up to R35 (about US$5.50) per gold story.
South Africa multimedia-journalism instructor Vincent Maher blogged about this
last week. He commented: “Johnnic have not always been the most
innovative when it comes to Web publishing and strategy but this time
they have leapfrogged in a massive, massive way with the launch of
reporter.co.za. … In my opinion, this is one of the biggest leaps
forward by any South African media company in the last two years.
Congratulations to Johnnic for having the courage to do this, and good
luck with the lawyers!”
The emphasis of the site, which is set to debut on January 9 (though
citizen reporters can register now), will be on watchdog/activist
reporting, consumer issues, and news from abroad. Maher notes that it
is tied to Johnnic’s educational program, “so it helps them identify
young reporters early.”
Among the incentives that the site is using to entice citizen reporters
are giveaway contests for registered site members (mobile phones); the “small
tip-off payments” for published material; and the possibility that if a
citizen news submission is for a hot breaking news alert, the site has
the capacity to negotiate publication of the story or photo in
Johnnic’s print publications — “with commensurate payment.”
This is smart. The more I learn about “citJ,” the more I have come to
believe that for citJ sites to be populated with quality content and
not a bunch of dreck, the industry needs to figure out better citizen
incentives. (And since that’s an opinion that I know will be unpopular
with a good many people in the fledgling citJ field, I’ll emphasize
that it’s a personal view.)
