The Reuters/Yahoo citizen journalism tie-up (am I allowed to call it citJ?) is getting a huge amount of space; as any old media move towards a new media trend will do. See a) News Corp buying MySpace (yawn), b) Warner signing a deal with YouTube and c) Reuters' Second Life reporter, and so on.
Anyway, the deal here is that Reuters and Yahoo launched their 'You Witness News' initiative today; the basic idea is that the public submit their own photos of news events and the site will pay them. Photos will be distributed by Reuters and Yahoo and used on their network of sites. The actual rates are still being worked out (Are there are that many zeros? Surely not...) and the service will eventually expand to accept contributions on sports, entertainment and other specialisms.
The difference here is that You Witness News pays people, which a growing number of services do. Much news stuff tends to be contributed for free (for the greater good, presumably) but the citizen journalism photo agency Scoopt started in July last year and that pays people, usually a couple of hundred quid once they have placed the picture somewhere. I just asked the founder Kyle MacRae how this new service influences Scoopt: he said it validates the market for paid citizen journalism. But he's looked closely at the service and said the payment thing doesn't seem that transparent.
"If you send pics to Yahoo/Reuters (through Flickr), both businesses can use this content however they like, potentially making a packet from advertising and paying you not a penny - unless, it seems, Reuters syndicates the content elsewhere, at which point you might get some kind of compensation, maybe, if you're lucky," he said.
"It's hardly transparent, and arguably exploitative."
• NBC predicts digital revenues at $1bn by 2009
NBC Universal TV's CEO Jeff Zucker reckons the company's digital division will record revenues of $300-$400m this year and $1bn by 2009, he said on Monday. The women's site iVillage will make up a third of that, and various download-to-own and wireless services will also drive that growth, as covered in Hollywood Reporter. Zucker described "collapsing windows in TV" rather than cannibalising NBC's traditional audience.
• Skyblog five times bigger than MySpace in France
Business Week, via alarm:clock Euro: Skyblog, a spin off of the radio station Skyrock, is now the most successful social net in France - outstripping MySpace 5.5% market share with its 27% reach. The site started by offering free blogs to users and then added email, instant messaging and other comms-related features - the other way round to Yahoo, as alarm:clock points out.
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