Digital Journal has relaunched their citizen journalism site with a range of new features.
Digital Journal offers a Citizen Journalism site in a similar fashion to Instablogs, OhMyNews, Newsvine, Norg Media and others. Members contribute news items for the site, and in theory the wisdom of the crowd combines to create a Google friendly news resource. Where Digital Journal perhaps is a little different in this space is that it revenue shares with contributors, and has paid out $38,000 to CitJ’s already (note I said in this space, the model has been used by blog networks for years, and the line between this and blogging is pretty thin).
The new features include collaboration tools that is claimed to set the site apart from the competition: “Blogging, paid news reporting, a massive photo department, social networking tools like Groups, and much more.”
DigitalJournal comScore numbers aren’t encouraging (50,000 page views in March), but I don’t hate it, it’s just that its yet another CitJ site. Instablogs took $3 million in March so there’s interest (and money) in this space still, so DigitalJournal may be well positioned going forward; besides: getting paid anything in the land of expecting your users to build your Web 2.0 fortune for free is always a positive.
Good citizens of Web 2.0.. applause!
“……and the line between this and blogging is pretty thin”
I agree. And the line between a ‘Home-Based Couch Potato Journo (if that’s the word)’ and ‘On-the-Field Reporter’ is much wider.
Good luck recouping those payouts with Google AdSense. Interesting model otherwise.
The College Media Network is doing something similar with a network of college bloggers contributing to a central platform. They also aim to develop into a more comprehensive multimedia platform. They were covered on College Mogul:
http://collegem...ading-the-word/
This is a great site, i’ve been a user for almost two years. The guys that run it are VERY active in the community and actually listen to user-suggestions on how to improve the site and make changes to accommodate.
And for Neb “Good luck recouping those payouts with Google AdSense. Interesting model otherwise.”
I believe the way it works is that users who contribute news articles are paid a percentage of the Google Ad revenue, so there is no “recouping” actually. The more they make the more users make.
It’s a great way to have fun, make a few bucks a month and read & write content you’re interested in… i’m totally hooked.
Digital Journal is a Great site, there are plenty of good writers there and analyze the articles well. It is just more than news.
@Duncan Did Instablogs secure the funding or are they still negotiating? Last time I was with its founder and he didnt know how much to ask at the VC pitch session.
Pretty surprised to hear the $3M figure besides InstaBlogs.
DJ is just awesome! I’ve been with them for a year…and I can’t imagine my life before then!
Founded in: 1998
Description: “One of The Fastest Growing News Company
Year 2008: Alexa Rank: 55188
I recommend those guys; don’t do that, be honest, make a clever marketing campaign, you’re not one of the fastest growing news company. If you were aware of the industry or techcrunch audience, you wouldn’t say that.
I don’t want to believe that but i want to say it for future; never call your friends to comment under your tech crunch post. But if you can’t stop doing this, note that tech crunch has a clever audience,hence you need to be more creative in commenting.
I have been an active member of digitaljournal since Dec . of 2006.
I would feel lost without it.
Who I refer to as my boss, Chris, couldn’t be more helpful.
Alex the unsung hero in my book Is The Magic Man.
All the staff are great.
A great site to be a part of.
DJ staff you guys are really great.
Nice and neatly integrated site, it look promising i wouldn’t be surprise if one day they will be bought by a big company. Just keep the community forum/group alive they will be your anchor.
Nat
http://www.workersinc.com
Danny ocean: Appreciate the advice. We do have CJs who are quite proud of the site (we are humbled by that), but rest assured we would never call them or friends to comment for us. When DJ’s community found out TechCrunch wrote about the site, they were clearly quite moved by that, hence the comments above.
And just wanted to clarify one thing about how quickly we’ve grown — we registered online in 1998 but that is not when we started our Cit. Journalist venture. We ran a tech news website for years and when we first started and our readers started asking to contribute. So, we opened up the site for bloggers and Cit. Journalists, and we grew to cover more than just tech. We started an informal form of paid citizen journalism in Sept. 2006, but didn’t get moving with citizen journalism really until 2007. So when you look at our growth, it’s only in the last year that we can measure it from a citizen journalism standpoint. We’re still young, small but we are growing.
We appreciate your type of feedback Danny, and that of everyone else, because we do really try to keep our ear to the Web’s ground and work to make changes based on that. We’re not a closed entity, by any stretch of the imagination.
- Chris Hogg, DigitalJournal.com
Chris,
Here’s the Alexa chart for all CitJs site. Digital Journal growth in last 6 months doesn’t look that strong to me.
Newsvine is way ahead of all.
http://tinyurl.com/6yqv88
Am I missing something?
Mike we are still the new kid on the block, for sure. We’ve seen our traffic range from 350K pageviews to almost a million per month, depending on the month.
Newsvine is of course the big kahoona but we also try to differentiate ourselves because we are a source of content rather than solely a link site. Newsvine has its columnists but it’s mainly powered by an AP feed and seeded links. I’m not knocking the site (there is a lot of value in these features) but we do look to try and stand out from a quality standpoint and provide actual information rather than simple click throughs to other stories.
We’re looking forward to growth and that is why we offer the financial incentive to others to help us grow. Nothing wrong with taking on the big boys with a business model that offers some compensation for others’ hard work.
Chris,
Thanks for answering.
Newsvine has been around for long, and its really encouraging to see other CitJ sites giving it a tough challenge. More the merrier.
Newsvine shares 90-100% of their ad revenue. I have tried finding for others including your as well, but could`t get specific figures.
For a writer like me who is looking to contribute as well earn few bucks, can you please explain how will I get paid. Will it be on discretion of editorial staff, votes or pageviews?
Mike,
We take a portion of our ad revenue and put it into a “moneypot” that gets divided among all citizen journalists. We pay out at the beginning of every month for the month prior through PayPal. We don’t provide a % breakdown, but I can say right now we are working to cover our costs and put as much back to citizen journalists as possible. As we grow, we also put more into the monthly “moneypot” so it does change month-to-month.
We don’t give specifics on our algorithms, but we essentially reward you based on how much attention your article gets and how much you contribute obviously increases what you are paid. It’s a combination of traffic, votes, pageviews, etc.
We have a live counter of our “moneypot” that is always climbing if you go to the front page, scroll to the bottom and click “Top Citizen Journalists.” Right now we’ve paid out $39,000+
We have members earning anywhere from $1 per month to hundreds of dollars. Many frequent contributors have also earned thousands.
We’re still growing so as the site’s ad revenue climbs our goal is to really put as much as possible into the “moneypot” for citizen journalists. Most of our writers earn much more than they would through AdSense.