by Cathy Freeman
Newsweek’s recent announcement to go on the market raises even more questions about the future of news. However, despite lackluster sales for traditional outlets, citizen news organizations are skyrocketing.
Allvoices is a citizen news site that allows any visitor to submit newsworthy stories, videos and images from any perspective or geological location. The site also encourages discussion by enabling contributions to existing news events. It calls itself the “first true people’s media," empowering every citizen to take responsibility for the future of the news industry.
And people are definitely doing their part. Allvoices grew by more than 400 percent in the last year, growing to 337,000 contributors in 180 countries with 4 million unique visits per month. This week, the newswire service announced it would soon expand into more than 30 countries that it feels are not being thoroughly covered by traditional media. Its areas of concentration include Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Egypt and China.
Aki Hashmi of allvoices, a former Knight-Ridder and Reuters executive, says the news service plans to spread into 30 more countries once this expansion is completed. Its goal is to create more virtual news desks that both citizen and professional journalists will call home.
With traditional international news coverage facing budget cuts and shrinking staffs, there is an obvious void that can be filled by citizen journalists and organizations like allvoices that are eager to contribute in-depth global news coverage.
And allvoices isn't the only one. Organizations like Citizen News Service, CNN iReport, NowPublic, OhmyNews, DigitalJournal.com and GroundReport are also encouraging everyday citizens to become diligent authors of the stories going on around us.
No comments:
Post a Comment