Mediaweek reports that CNN is all set to launch iReport.com, a kind of CNN-Tube where its all up to the user/poster. CNN has, like most media organizations, vetted its user generated content (ugc) with about ten per cent getting through. In the article Susan Grant, executive vp of CNN News Services is quoted as saying:
“The community will decide what the news is. We are not going to discourage or encourage anything…iReport will be completely unvetted.” (CNN will, however, monitor the site for objectionable content.)
Later in the article Craig Woerz, managing partner at Media Storm is quoted as saying
“We love it. That’s exactly the kind of things our advertisers are looking for. What we like about citizen journalism is that it’s emotional and real.”
Couple of things here to think about.
If the readers really decide what is news, who will decide what is objectionable?
Will the contributers get paid? My guess is not. [see the boilerplate for the present i-reports at the end of this post]
And thats why the Craig Woerz quote says so much. This is not an exercise in community building. Nor is it a display of the mighty mainstream media finally ceding the power of agenda setting and news evaluation to "the people". Its just one more attempt to milk the lucrative cash cow of ugc.
We need to start to build communities of collaboration. We need tap in to the collective consciousness of the communities we wish to engage with and understand that they are not cattle to milk but collaborators in constructing the new news agenda of the future.
This is what you give CNN:
"By submitting your material, for good and valuable consideration, the sufficiency and receipt of which you hereby acknowledge, you hereby grant to CNN and its affiliates a non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide license to edit, telecast, rerun, reproduce, use, syndicate, license, print, sublicense, distribute and otherwise exhibit the materials you submit, or any portion thereof, as incorporated in any of their programming or the promotion thereof, in any manner and in any medium or forum, whether now known or hereafter devised, without payment to you or any third party."
Well, they do need the money, poor things.
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