Speaker: Turi Munthe, Demotix

A bit about Demotix...

• Background is politics and freelancing
• Desire to create not just a socially-responsible business, but a "actively good" one
• Basic idea was to create a safe platform for anyone wanting to upload stories not being covered.
• "Free speech as soft power" -- led to democratization of regions such as the Middle East.
• "Mainstream media has been shedding jobs like a 70 year old man sheds hair."
• Both foreign correspondents and local reporters are being cut.
• Only 4 US newspapers even have a foreign desk.
• Even the BBC doesn't have a full-time staffer in Latin America.
• This enshrines "parachute journalism".
• Shallow knowledge of local issue.
• Ever-increasing reliance on AP and Reuters for world news.
• Ramifications for free speech.
• Business model: instead of big networks of volunteers, Demotix receives content, sells it to newspapers and splits the take 50/50.
• Launched in 2009; got scoops because of local journalists.
• In June of that year, had several journalists in Iran when Ahmadinejad declared himself president after only one round of voting.
• London-based sales team, global network of resellers, strategic partnership with Corbis

"What we realized we couldn't do"

• To build a model on citizen journalism, you have to get content that's sellable.
• Text is really difficult

1. Most papers will tell you people can't write
2. Impossible to copyright data; can't sell it as text.

• Despite starting as a platform for free speech, platform is mainly used for photo and video.
• Good at: bomb fallout, protests, Arab Spring, etc.
• Some contributors are able to live off earnings. Would be breaking even if weren't reinvesting at current pace.
• People actually contributing journalistic content is a really small number.
• "80/20 rule is actually 99/1 when it comes to useful content." -- Web 2.0 is a myth.
• Very few people actually interested in newsgathering.
• Built network by a lot of reaching out to groups like local camera clubs.
• "The way you go out and build your community in the beginning is how your community will be forever."
• Example of Digg:
• Used to be really cutting-edge stuff; lost their original users. Became free for all and lost its actual value.
• Demotix, going for a specific demographic, has retained its user base.
• One of its competitors (Citizen Site) sought to grow user base as much as possible and while they get the occasional good scoop, it's not as consistent.
• That said, they're doing some interesting gamification stuff.
• Gamification: "Web gurus treat human beings as children -- and are right to do so."
• Temptation to use internal stats to gamify content filtering process, but feeling is it cheapens the process of journalism.
• Worries about faked content. Happens to everyone and would be brutally bad if done early on. Use metadata and calling to verify.
• Balance between speed and quality.
• Quality of photojournalism has vastly improved over the last decade or so, with everyone taking photos.
• Storyful: "opposite of Demotix" in approach. Acts as breaking story news curation service.
• Both pushes highly-shared stories to the front as well as verifies the content.
• No way around using humans for news
• Contributors everywhere except Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa
• Important points for communities:
• Improving that communities news
• Learning how to engage that community is very important
• Community is who will decide your front page. Off-site, will write your content.

Questions to audience:

• How has the relationship between journalist and audience changed?
• Pew: "Views of the News Media 1985-2011"
• Content quality has decreased
• Culture of deference has lessened
• Simultaneously adds new voices but decrease of trust in accuracy makes everything relative; what is true?
• Liveblogging as a direct result of citizen journalism: "article without the stitching" due to the realization readers can "do the stitching themselves."
• "Downside is we have nobody to trust."
• How does a community impact the way in which you create news?
• To drive engagement, repeat visits, etc.
• Newspapers start from a negative position -- inaccurate, partisan and influenced. The community is those readers who have overcome that.
• What is UGC good/bad at?
• Good at: news sourcing, accuracy, trust, speed, data crunching, content
• Bad at: access, investigative work, writing = "lowest common denominator journalism"
• "You cannot do citizen journalism without a professional journalism lead."
• The job of professional journalists now is to learn to manage these networks as effectively as possible.
• Seymour Hersh at the New Yorker cannot be replaced by UGC -- he has relationships, time/funding, exceptionally difficult work, verification. Writes 10,000 word articles that are read.
• Hackgate is another example of something that couldn't be discovered by UGC.
• What are the implications for journalism? Can UGC address some of the bigger blindspots in journalism? What is the next phase?
• Shift in trust from professionalism to authenticity.
• "From Encyclopaedia Britannica to Wikipedia."
• Things better managed as communities will become communities (i.e., Craigslist). Things that need unique curation and authority will continue to be run by journalists.
• How do you sell truth?
• Stories are now "collections of subjectivities."

Follow Turi Munthe on Twitter @turimunthe.