Citizen journalism seems all the rage these days, with normal people breaking news to the world with their mobile phones and portable computers. News sites like GroundReport and CNN’s iReport are offering users outlets for their eyewitness stories, and with emerging mobile broadcasting products like Twitter and Qik, we’re only going to see the trend continue to grow.
In keeping with the trend, MySpace has partnered with NBC News and MSNBC.com to launch its “Decision ‘08 Convention” contest, which will offer two MySpace users the chance to attend and report from either the Republic or Democratic national convention.
From the press release:
The videos should be less than two minutes long and answer one of the following questions: “Why do you vote?” “Why are you the best person for this job?” “How will you stand out in the crowd and get the scoop no one else can?” The submission period closes on Wednesday, July 16.
Judges will narrow the submissions down to five candidates, who will be voted on by the MySpace community. The two contestants with the highest number of votes will be sent to the national conventions, where they’ll serve as reporters representing the MySpace community. The contest is being orchestrated through MySpace’s Impact portal, which offers users a place to learn and get involved with politics, community service, and eco-friendly projects.
Not a bad initiative. There are probably thousands of talented people out there that years ago would inevitably need the approval of someone inside a big broadcasting agency.
Today you can skip that phase and go direct to the mass.
This sounds like something is up with myspace, everyone knows why people vote it doesn’t take a surgeon or myspace ceo to figure that out!!
http://www.crunchnow.com
Thats a good initiative.
myspace is rockking.
Nandkishore gitte
Life At SEA
http://mylifeatsea.blogspot.com
A new vocation for the Recession Hit World. Good news,
Keep Up.
Rajeev Vashisht
http://tekno-world.blogspot.com
It is interesting that myspace would team up with NBC given that myspace is a newscorp (rupert murdoch, Faux news, etc) property.
Sounds like a pretty sweet deal for MySpace and NBC and they certainly have the audience to compete with YouTube here.
This duo also has the MSNBC-owned Newsvine to promote to, so they could get quite a bit of original content if it’s promoted to the CJ audience properly.
Jason any idea if MSNBC plans to use Newsvine in this gig?
- Chris Hogg
DigitalJournal.com
(A citizen journalist news network)
Don’t you think things can get carried away? some “urban journalist” don’t follow the same rules traditional journalists follow (fact checking?).
What will happen when they report that Yahoo and Microsoft have started renegotiating and it links to NBC? without being true, of course
Matt I would argue some CJs don’t follow rules, but it’s not fair to blanket them all with that statement. The same thing can be said about mainstream reporters — not all are objective, trustworthy or factual.
You will always have agenda-driven people on both sides, but you can also see them coming.
This sounds like a rip-off of an idea the Republican Party came up with for its YouTube page and convention: http://www.youtube.com/GOPConvention2008
Disclaimer: All content must be submitted with a flaming conservative bias.
-Rupert Murdoch
Chris, certainly not every CJ… of course. But the entire concept revolves the idea that if the crowd think is real, it must be. And sometimes it’s not.
Another interesting thing about CJ was what Arianna Huffington, from Huffington Post said in the Personal Democracy Forum. She said that “new media” should move away from the “old media”’s mistake: telling both sides of the story!