Media News - Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Citizen journalism photo site makes mark from Iran

Photos from Iranian citizen journalists made the front page of the New York Times through photo community Demotix, marking a coming of age for the website. The site, which describes itself as citizen journalism website and photo agency, develops relationships with citizen journalists around the world and acts as a broker for their photos to major news organisations, television channels, websites and magazines. It recruits its photographers in a number of ways, approaching some who have published work elsewhere and also looking to people who have published photos on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The benefit of having existing relationships with photographers is that unlike media sites that solicit user-generated photos from the general public, Demotix has already verified the identity of photographers before a news event, said Jonathan Tepper, chief operating officer for Demotix. And 'the community police themselves', Tepper said. Last Saturday, Demotix had pictures of people being tear-gassed as authorities cracked down on the protests. 'The photos were probably the earliest of any wire,' Tepper said. (The Guardian)

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