Reuters Embraces Citizen Photojournalism, But Is This Just A Way Of Getting Those Exclusives Without Having To Pay A Fortune? Don’t Outfits Like Scoopt Offer A Better Deal?

But take a look at what Scoopt is now doing with pictures posted on Flickr and, financially, for the citizen journalist that might work out a better idea.

On the surface it sounds great -- Yahoo and Reuters teaming together so that pictures uploaded to a Yahoo site will appear on Flickr and a similar site for video. Editors at Yahoo and Reuters will take a look at those photos and the ones they like they will use on their web sites. For the citizen photojournalist great glory, but no money.

Reuters does say, however, that if pictures are selected for the Reuters News Pictures Service then the citizen photojournalist will receives a payment, but the company hasn’t yet figured out its payment scale. Such a system is already in practice today for independent professional news photographers –they are called stringers – and they are quite highly paid for their output. Think Reuters will pay the citizen journalists as much as they pay professional stringers?

Which begs further questions: Do you think the citizen photojournalism output on some events could be so massive and good that professional stringers aren’t needed any more? Could it even get so good that one doesn’t need as many professional news photographers on the payroll as there are today? Management says, of course, that nothing could be further from their plans, but they would say that, wouldn’t they?

ftm background

WIPO Moves Fast on Broadcast Treaty. Webcasters Tremble !
Time being relative, the United Nations organization watching intellectual property law is moving at blinding speed. In the blink of the galactic eye broadcasters will likely have a new set of worldwide rights…and governments will have new controls on the internet.

The Oil Depot Explosions Near London – one of the Worst European fires since the end of World War II -- Showed That Citizen Journalists Are Getting Even More Enthusiastic About Contributing and They Don’t Seem to Mind Not Getting Paid
Within minutes of the huge oil depot explosions and fires outside London this week citizen journalists were busy sending the BBC and other news organizations their digital pictures and video. The BBC received some 6,500 emails with digital attachments and there were more than 250,000 requests specifically for those amateur offerings alone on the BBC web site.

Reuters Purchase of Action Images Directly Targets Getty Images Commercial Sports Business, But Can Reuters Escape the Getty Perception That Its Commercial Ties with the NHL, NBA and Others Adversely Affects Its Media Sports Coverage
There can be no doubt that Getty Images is an absolutely incredible media success story. In just 10 years it has established itself as not only the world’s leading image company owning the world’s largest collection of still and moving images, but at the same time it is recognized by the world’s leading media as a major player in the daily news pictures business.

“And Now for Your Latest In-Flight Entertainment Turn To Any Channel and Watch How We’re Preparing This Plane to Crash Land; Be Sure to Hear the Experts on the Ground Give the Odds for Our Success!”
And if you think that headline is pure fiction, think again. It just happened!

If Citizens Provide Their Exclusive Breaking News Photos/Video to the Media Then Shouldn’t They Get Paid? Apparently Not!
The London bombings brought home the power of amateur photography, still and video. Some of the most dramatic pictures of the bombings themselves came from people on the trains using their mobile phone cameras. The arrest of two suspects was captured on amateur video.

And what about the citizen photojournalist who has THE picture? There have been plenty of news events in the past couple of years where someone with a camera phone was at a breaking news site first (some of the victims of the London Underground bombings, for instance, sent out the first pictures of what was happening), or someone with a camera phone just happened to be at an event where something unexpected happened. And those people have been sending those pictures off to the news organizations as fast as they could for the glory, perhaps not realizing just how much money they might be passing up.

How much? Video taken of the arrest of two London bombing suspects sold for some £70,000. When Concorde crashed on takeoff in Paris a few years back some guys happened to be nearby and shot stills and others had video. Reuters itself paid some £10,000 for the stills and the video shot by others showed up a couple of days later on APTN exclusively.

And even then the guys who shot all that footage didn’t do nearly as well as they could have. The secret to financial success in such cases is to sell exclusively within as many countries as possible – giving a news agency exposure to pictures just ruins their value.

Which is why an outfit like Scoopt in the UK could make more sense. The people at Scoopt make their living by selling citizen pictures to the major media on an exclusive basis in as many countries as they can. And under a new plan when users add their pictures directly to Flickr (not going through the Yahoo/Reuters special site) and they add a Scoopt tag to their pictures, that allows Scoopt editors to continually browse those pictures. Those they think they can sell they will immediately try to do so on a 50-50 split.

And those they see they think are really “something”, they can try for some really big bucks. And because it is a revenue split rather than just a fee it is in their interest to try and get the user the highest fee possible.

If there is one word that should be branded to a citizen photojournalist’s pocketbook it is “copyright”. With Scoopt the photographer retains all the copyright. If the picture is to be used for commercial purposes rather than just for news use then that’s another fee to be negotiated. If the pictures are added into picture archives then holding onto the copyright means the photographer shares in the revenue from an archive sale. (We asked Reuters about that particular issue with their project – whether these citizen pictures will find their way into their archives -- but we did not receive a response by publishing deadline).

The whole copyright issue is, in fact, a landmine that citizen journalists don’t really understand, but the news organizations do. Many news organizations have terms and condition that specifically say that they assume the copyright to those pictures sent in. That means the photographer won’t see any archive money; if some advertiser wants to use that picture for a commercial purpose then that money goes to the news organization.

Putting the money issue to one side, few can squabble with the idea of getting citizen photojournalist pictures on various news web sites and for Reuters to distribute some of these pictures within its own pictures service, or within a special service it will start just for such pictures. The quality may not be the same as those taken by professionals, but as was learned sometime ago a poor quality picture of something is better than no picture at all. And one can take it for granted that Reuters will do whatever it has to do to protect its brand by ensuring citizen pictures are legitimate, have not been doctored within Adobe, etc. etc.

One group that might complain are the current Reuters staff photographers and stringers, not worried so much by the actual competition, but rather whether this is just the start of how the company intends to handle pictures further down the road. One photographer, who asked not to be identified, said, “This causes a lot of concerns, and rightly so! There is a generally negative pre-disposition against what is seen as competition which is not up to professional standards, in terms of ethical responsibility, in terms of quality and in terms of money.”

Sounds like the internal pre-sale to the staff the project most effects didn’t quite do it!

Maybe to some people it’s just the glory of having the picture or video published that counts, but news organizations like Reuters earn a lot of money from pictures and video. It is big business. And citizen photojournalists should understand that if they do this right the money they receive for even one picture could easily pay for the cost of their camera phone.

Getty Scoops Up Scoopt - March 19, 2007

One certainly hopes Getty is going to implement some sort of Chinese wall between its normal commercial activities and what it does with pictures obtained through Scoopt that it has now bought.

Scoopt was set up for citizen journalists to submit their exclusive pictures of some event and have Scoopt professionals get them the best price for their product. Now Getty has scooped up Scoopt the question becomes whether the public can any longer expect the best price for its pictures, or will Getty take the best pictures and plug them into its own commercial news pictures service with the citizen journalist getting a paltry amount when that same picture could have been auctioned for far more –and Getty has already shown in the past it is very capable of holding auctions on exclusive pictures.

One hopes that Getty with its financial muscle will improve Scoopt technology, and with its international connections it can offer more opportunities for commercial exclusive sales and that it generally not mess around with the principles of why Scoopt was established in the first place.

Comment: Citizen Image - December 6, 2006

"We are Citizen Image and have been going great guns in citizen photojournalist space since this time last year.

"Philip has nailed it right on the head. The photographer with the Reuters/Yahoo alliance still gets the short end of the stick when it comes to compensation. A photo credit is nice but compensation in hard currency is much better.

"Citizen Image has sold countless number of images to traditional media outlets and has made sure that the the contributor is paid 50% of all proceeds each time their image is sold. After all the contributing photographers are the reason we are in business to begin with."