Seen from the other side of the pond, citizen journalism initiatives are flourishing in the US. Associated Content (dreadful name) just secured 10 Mill. US Dollars from a venture firm, and NowPublic raked in 10,6 Million earlier this week (via PJ Net Today).
Additionally, there’s the issue-centred experiments such as Off The Bus, focusing on the presidential campaign. And undeterred by the tough lessons of the crowdsourcing project initiated by the some of the same people in alliance with Wired (previously covered).
The European initiatives that I have seen so far look very anaemic compared to the US peers. NowPublic brings users who essentially blog or bookmark news from established media together with people producing their own stories. The crowdsourcing of news judgement makes for a rather chaotic front page (compare NowPublic at any time with, say, nytimes.com). But there are benefits. Just a few seconds of browsing brought a link to an important story about legal protection of journalists and the now really tricky question if bloggers, or at least some, now qualify as a reporters.
In Norway at least, attention in the past few months has been centered very much on the growth of social networking sites, especially the enormous success of Facebook (there’s a very relevant research project on web communities at Sintef in Trondheim, see presentations from a recent seminar.)
The big Kroner question is: who will come up with a citizen journalism project in Norway/Scandinavia worthy of venture capitalist attention?
Jepp, hvem vil? Det spørs om det norske markedet er for lite? ABC-nyheter har jo forsøkt å få til en blanding som ligner NowPublic.
Jeg tror ikke markedet er for lite, men det kommer jo også an på hvor dyktige de etablerte mediehusene er. Det jeg er spent på er om det kommer nye prosjekter utenom mediehusene. ABC/Startsiden er jo eid av Telenor. Se ellers litt mer nytt om samme tema.