Should citizen-journalists be paid?

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Is paying our photographers and reporters against the spirit of citizen-journalism? It’s something that we are occasionally challenged on, but we think is emphatically not the case.

Given the success of Wikis, Creative Commons and open-source, it is tempting to see the future of journalism in free-to-edit, unpaid websites. These sites, such as NowPublic, are popular but have been criticized for being opinion-driven and derivative. You can judge for yourself the standard of articles on such sites, but what is undeniable is that only a small minority of stories are based on first-hand new information. Original journalism is in short supply.

In recent years, virtually all major news organizations have incorporated some user-generated content into their publications, programmes and websites. CNN has i-Report, the BBC asks users to Have Your Say, and Reuters has teamed up with Yahoo to feed it citizen-produced content. However, these projects are dependent on photographers giving away their content for free, whether in charity or ignorance. Their business model is based on citizens’ willingness to surrender their copyright.

Source: blogs.telegraph.co.uk