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'The dedicated cit-j agency model isn't the way forward' Posted: 09/02/09 By: Kyle MacRae email this story | post a comment Profile picture of Kyle Macrae Scoopt, the 'citizen journalism' photo agency I co-founded in 2005 and sold to Getty Images in 2007, is no more. On a personal level, that's a little sad: like losing a child, albeit an errant one that left home long ago. But, as a business decision, I understand Getty's move completely: fundamentally, the Scoopt model doesn't work. That's not to say that people don't want to sell their newsworthy images; many of them do. Nor is to say that the mainstream media has little appetite for such pictures; it most certainly does (note, that's newsworthy pictures we're talking about, not 24,000 snapshots of snow). But it is to say - in my personal but rather battle-weary opinion - that the dedicated cit-j agency model isn't the way forward.

While it's a no-brainer to say (as I did endlessly) that whenever news breaks there's likely to be a punter with a cameraphone on the scene before a pro, the chances of that punter already being a member of your agency, or even having heard of it, are vanishingly small.

Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable Back in 1993, the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain began investigating piracy of Dave Barry's popular column, which was published by the Miami Herald and syndicated widely. In the course of tracking down the sources of unlicensed distribution, they found many things, including the copying of his column to alt.fan.dave_barry on usenet; a 2000-person strong mailing list also reading pirated versions; and a teenager in the Midwest who was doing some of the copying himself, because he loved Barry's work so much he wanted everybody to be able to read it. One of the people I was hanging around with online back then was Gordy Thompson, who managed internet services at the New York Times. I remember Thompson saying something to the effect of "When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem." I think about that conversation a lot these days.

Your Camera Is an Agent for Change By Qiana MestrichqianamestrichcloseAuthor: Qiana Mestrich See Author's Posts (6) Recent Posts * Braving the Sight Unseen: Interview with Blind Photographer Timothy O'Brien * Photographers on Twitter, Part 2: My Favorite Tweets * Photographers on Twitter: How They Use It * Photography Empathy: How You Feel Is What You Get * Your Camera Is an Agent for Change Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, of Panamanian and Croatian heritage, Qiana Mestrich has studied photography and its history for more than 15 years. Trained as a fine art photographer, Qiana's personal work ranges from portraiture to still life and landscapes. As a world citizen, she's also documented her travels to countries like Panama, Cuba, Trinidad & Tobago, the U.K. and more to come. View Qiana Mestrich's fine art photography on her Web site or read her blog, Dodge & Burn: Diversity in Photography. in Photojournalism on September 16th, 2008 As photographers, we often use our cameras to make money - shooting weddings, editorial, advertising, stock photography, etc. Yet the camera can do more than help us earn an income. As Dorothea Lange put it, this powerful tool can teach people "how to see without a camera."

Photographers on Twitter: How They Use It By Qiana MestrichqianamestrichcloseAuthor: Qiana Mestrich See Author's Posts (6) Recent Posts * Braving the Sight Unseen: Interview with Blind Photographer Timothy O'Brien * Photographers on Twitter, Part 2: My Favorite Tweets * Photographers on Twitter: How They Use It * Photography Empathy: How You Feel Is What You Get * Your Camera Is an Agent for Change Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, of Panamanian and Croatian heritage, Qiana Mestrich has studied photography and its history for more than 15 years. Trained as a fine art photographer, Qiana's personal work ranges from portraiture to still life and landscapes. As a world citizen, she's also documented her travels to countries like Panama, Cuba, Trinidad & Tobago, the U.K. and more to come. View Qiana Mestrich's fine art photography on her Web site or read her blog, Dodge & Burn: Diversity in Photography. in Business of Photography on December 4th, 2008 What is Twitter? You may have heard of it from many different sources like the social media geeks in your life. Perhaps it was through corporate news like the recent Twittering Moms against Motrin incident or how the online shoe retailer Zappos uses this micro-blogging platform to transparently communicate with its customers. Regardless of what you've heard, it all started with a 14-year old Jack Dorsey (now CEO) who way back when wondered: what if you could create an instant messaging service to easily and quickly share your status with friends and vice versa? Personally, I created my own profile after reading that NASA's Phoenix Mars lander was posting updates of its mission on Twitter. Soon after choosing my profile picture and a photo to customize my Twitter background, I discovered there was a whole world of online communication happening-with over 3 million users all sending messages to each other, in 140 characters or less. Within the Twitter-verse, I've found many who identif

Media and development - Where's the Gap? John Davison, the Head of Media at Christian Aid has begun his personal visiting research fellowship at Polis with a research seminar at which he outlined his plans for a study of the relationship between journalism and NGOs in Africa

2005 and 2006 saw the popular recognition and commercial embrace of a phenomenon which is set to deeply affect the intellectual life of developed and developing nations for years to come. Yahoo! bought Flickr. Google acquired YouTube. Rupert Murdoch purchased MySpace, and declared the future of his NewsCorp empire to lie in the user-led content creation spaces of such social software Websites more than in its many newspapers, broadcast channels, and other media interests (Murdoch, 2005). Finally, TIME broke with its long-standing tradition of nominating one outstanding public figure as 'person of the year', and instead selected 'you': all of us who are active in collaborative online spaces (Grossman, 2006).

Highlight and Share the Web! Diigo is a powerful research tool and a knowledge-sharing community Research and Collaborate * Don't just bookmark! Highlight the web! Add sticky notes too! * Access and search your findings from any PC or iphone! * Create groups to pool resources for specific projects. Connect and Discover * You are what you annotate, creating a presence for you in the community. * Connect with friends effortlessly and non-intrusively through content. * Discover quality resources on any subject or get personalized recommendations. * Learn More » Play Demo Video

"This past weekend, the horrific image of a young woman dying on camera in the midst of a protest in Iran turned into a rallying cry for many of those participating/following the events in Iran. In 40 seconds of grainy footage (shot on what appears to be the mobile phone of a passerby), we first see the wounded woman - now identified as Neda - as she falls to the floor into a pool of blood. Two men come to her aid and try to stem the bleeding from her chest. The person filming moves in closer and Neda turns towards the camera, seeming to fix her gaze on the lens pointed at her. A few seconds pass, the bleeding becomes more profuse, and Neda falls unconscious, passing away within moments. "