PressEthic

These days, with just about every cell phone equipped with a digital camera, anyone is eligible to become a photojournalist. Starting today, Reuters and Yahoo News are welcoming submissions of digital pictures from plebs like you and me.

Saul Hansell of the New York Times reported:

“The project is among the most ambitious efforts in what has become known as citizen journalism, attempts by bloggers, start-up local news sites and by global news organizations like CNN and the BBC to see if readers can also become reporters.

"Many news organizations turned to photographs taken by amateurs to supplement coverage of events like the London subway bombing and the Asian tsunami. Yahoo’s news division has already used images that were originally posted on Flickr, the company’s photo-sharing site. For example, it created a slide show of images from Thailand after the coup there in September.”

Amateur photographers will be able to long on to Yahoo's, “You Witness News” site and upload their pictures. From there, editors can comb through submissions for possible publication or broadcast.

But for all the possible tech-savvy citizen journalists there, how many are actually capturing news worthy images?

Hansell’s article continues:

"People don’t say, 'I want to see user-generated content,’ ” said Lloyd Braun, who runs Yahoo’s media group. “They want to see Michael Richards in the club. If that happens to be from a cellphone, they are happy with a cellphone. If it’s from a professional photographer, they are happy for that, too.”

The article made an interesting point by bringing up the debacle last year involving a Reuters freelance photographer who submitted digitally altered photographs. I’m not sure how easy it would be to catch fraudulent pictures in the future once serge of less than profession photographers floods the servers. There are talks of supposed fake-photo detecting software in the works, but as of now, editors will just have to use their discretion.

Some media watchers believe that this move is just the latest step in the democratizing of journalism, one aiding in the possible death of professional photojournalism. Dan Gillmor, a journalist for the Center for Citizen Media wrote Monday:

“The pros who deal in breaking news have a problem. They can’t possibly compete in the media-sphere of the future. We’re entering a world of ubiquitous media creation and access. When the tools of creation and access are so profoundly democratized, and when updated business models connect the best creators with potential customers, many if not most of the pros will fight a losing battle to save their careers.”

Gilmore makes a persuading argument, especially when you check out some of the YouTube links he includes in his article, like the video of a UCLA student getting shocked with a taser by campus police last month. The quality’s not great (it must have been shot on a camera phone) but it’s a shot that no professional could have captured, and ultimately, I think it's only those rare pictures and videos that make “grassroots” journalism so compelling.