Media News - Thursday, July 02, 2009

Fledgling website hopes to open journalism to all

A year-old website, inspired by the use of Twitter and Internet media reporting out of Iran, hopes to become the go-to forum for citizen journalists everywhere as traditional media pulls back. Allvoices.com, a fledgling social networking-cum-news aggregator site launched in 2008, uses algorithms to help it sort news from around the world in a manner akin to what Google Inc does. Its twist is that it encourages and enables anyone to be a reporter and uses an in-house system to rate would-be journalists on popularity and credibility. The company says they have 33,000 separate "landing" pages for countries, cities and other special categories -- each with its own following. People can file to the sites from computers, or even by sending text messages from mobile phones. Allvoices, which is operating on USD 4.5m in funding from Vantage Point Venture Partners, has started paying its most popular reporters. They can earn anywhere from USD 0,25 to USD 2 per thousand page views. Contributors are free to post almost anything. Credibility is rated by people who read postings and by the in-house algorithm, which is designed to help measure postings against traditional media and other sources. But throwing the site open to the public has its pitfalls. One recent post with a high credibility rating said the Ark of The Covenant was about to be unveiled. Other stories cite no sources, anathema in traditional journalism. (Reuters)

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