Reuters carries an interesting article that illustrates that the power to capture news is transferring over to the ordinary man on the street.
Netherlands’ De Telegraaf sells 800,000 copies a day, which makes it the highest circulation in the country. Twice in the last month it’s used pictures taken on camera phones by members of the public.
Most spectacular was this example, where last Wednesday they:
… published a picture of the dead filmmaker and columnist Theo van Gogh who police say was probably killed by an Islamic militant.
Passerby Aron Boskma took a picture with his cell phone at the scene of the crime in Amsterdam. News photographers arrived only after the body had been covered, leaving Boskma’s picture the only one showing knives plunged into Van Gogh’s body.
It seems that a Dutch news agency (APL) also incentivises people to send in their amateur snaps of news, with offers of prizes and money in conjunction with website Nu.nl.
If you think about it, any news breaking in a semi-public place will be far more likely to be witnessed live by a passing person with a camera phone. This will definitely marginalise news photographers, who can only react later to news stories and (as in Theo van Gogh’s case) often arrive after the action has taken place.
Imagine being able to see, for instance, Diana’s Mercedes crash, instead of pictures of the crashed car some minutes later.
So, here’s a crazy thought for a big news, crazy day.
The rise and rise of the blog has shown that many, many people are capable of producing first class written content, worthy of any traditional “professional” journalist. And the tip of the iceberg has started to show for amateur photojournalism too, as evidenced above.
Would it be possible to produce a news paper (on or offline) made up entirely of freelance, amateur content?
If I was a news journalist, I’d start to look over my shoulder and twitch a little.
UPDATE: A week later, I came across an example of People’s Media in South Korea. Read about it here.
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