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So Shambo, the sacred bullock, gets another reprieve from the slaughterhouse because UK government officials first showed up without a warrant and then couldn't get access to the Skanda Vale site. Full story here (certain to update later) and one of our photos, taken by Ross Pierson, below.
UPDATE: Whoops, Shambo's just had the chop.
Whether you blame global warming, local authorities building houses on flood plains, a seasonal blip in the weather or God missing the celestial toilet again, the fact is that much of England is currently underwater. We're getting a constant flow of great, albeit alarming, pics. You can check them out here
Photo credit: Linda Kay Sladek
We've received this request from Danny Bradbury, a journo based in Canada, who wants to speak with one of more Scoopt members in connection with an article:
The article is for the Canwest Syndicate, which with its combined papers has a readership of over a million people in Canada. It includes papers such as the Vancouver Sun and Saskatoon Star Phoenix, as well as the National Post. My research deadline is the close of play this Thursday 26th July. I am hoping to speak to a cellphone camera user (has to be a cellphone camera) who has used their device to take and submit news images to Scoopt. I will use the interviewee as a case study to demonstrate the social importance of cellphone cameras as a way of taking and disseminating news images.Please get in touch at +1 780 628 5755 (Canadian number) or by email at danny@itjournalist.com
Curiously enough, I was just admiring/grimacing over some scary pics of Amy Winehouse from yesterday over here (and that's surely the best blog post title this year) when Richard Horsfield at kasstzam sent in a some shots of her playing a gig later that same day, down in Cornwall. Pics are here. Curiouser still, she seems to be trying to climb out of her shorts. Now there's a caption competition picture if ever I saw one...
Sorry for blog hiatus... been on holiday.
Anyway, good news for Scoopt member George Kouvalias. His picture of a Canadair tackling a fire near the Acropolis in Athens was selected by The Guardian for its Eyewitness slot and run in colour on the centre-page spread today. Nice one, George!
Always nice to be acknowledged as a logical extension :-)
Simon Willis produced a cracking report on citizen journalism/user-generated content/punter pix for the BBC Newsnight Scotland, broadcast last night. You can catch it here for, I think, 24 hours or so. Below is our contribution to the piece:
Sonya "The Black Widow" Thomas munches her way through 39 hotdogs to lose Nathan's Annual Hot Dog Eating Contest.
The winner managed 66 dogs before presumably exploding Mr Creosote style. For those of you unfamilair with Mr Creosote...
...to us :-)
Two years old today.
Watching the BBC News 24 rolling news channel last Saturday afternoon as it rightly fixated on the ballsed-up terror attack on Glasgow Airport, it was at once gratifying and, frankly, worrying to see the constant flow of eye-witness pictures and videos hit the screen.
Gratifying because here was citizen journalism once again proving the point we've banged on about for two years now which is that whenever anything happens anywhere on the planet, it's going to be members of the public with cameras/cameraphones who are first on (or caught up in) the scene, well before the professional press pack gets there. Indeed, it was amusing listening to the BBC's first correspondent to arrive at the airport reporting from behind police lines ("I can see, er, smoke in the distance") while near-live pics captured by airport passengers were displayed on our TV screens. It's a powerful thing, this citizen journalism -- and absolutely essential for any news organisation to embrace. As the BBC does so well.
Worryingly well. Because while News 24 scooped the story with punters' pics, the flow of content into Scoopt was somewhat lacking.
Hmm. Why was that? Is it just that people don't care about getting paid for content -- content which is, in this case and others like it, extremely valuable (£££)? Is that they just don't know that there's a commercial market for amateur photos of a genuine news story but would use that market if they could -- and by extension a broker like Scoopt? Or is there a more complicated trend here where people's primary motivation is to share experiences... and only later, if at all, do they care about the potential for making money?
Probably the last of these. And in my view, that's probably best for the greater good. But what's important here -- what's really, really important -- is that people who want a fair reward for content that gets published or broadcast get that reward, either in the heat of the moment or later when the dust has settled. Because what really bugs me is when Sunday papers produce 8-page features using viewers' pictures grabbed (illegally) from TV broadcasts without paying the photographers a penny.
Not that I'm saying that this is necessarily what happened last weekend... but you can see the problem. When you send a hot picture to a broadcaster, will they sell it to the papers -- and if so, will you get paid or exploited? Or will they not sell it on -- in which case, is it any wonder if a paper resorts to publishing TV screengrabs when that's all they have?
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