Should citizen journalists be better rewarded?

[Keyword: journalism, online journalism, citizen journalism, blogging]. More on Citizen Journalism from Graham Holliday, who asks "Should citizen journalists be better rewarded?" after Yahoo! and Reuters joined forces to bring us 'You Witness News' (yep, another CJ ghetto). The catch? "Users will not be paid for images displayed on the Yahoo and Reuters sites. But people whose photos or videos are selected for distribution to Reuters clients will receive a payment." although "the company had not yet figured out how to structure those payments. The basic payment may be relatively small, but [the Reuters president] said Reuters was likely to pay more to people offering exclusive rights to images of major events."

I'll leave Graham the last, very eloquent, word:

"If it's good enough for a hugely profitable company such as Reuters to use, then it's good enough for Reuters to pay a Reuters rate to the person creating that content.

"Despite the incursions of big media, one of the things the social - or people's web - still manages to hold dear is a sense of ethics. Wrongdoers are rapidly banged to rights, rightdoers are a cause celebre.

"Celebrated cases are heavily linked to, and in a world where links rule, companies, decision makers and bloggers all live or die by the thoughts, feelings and analysis of those conversing in the crowd.

"It's all well and good old media bumbling into our media world, but don't come cherry picking without being prepared to cough up the readies. Throw crumbs and you'll find them spat back at you.

"And whatever you do, be straight up with us. If you have no intention of paying us, say so now. Procrastination only breeds suspicion."

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Paul Bradshaw lectures on the Journalism degree at UCE Birmingham media department. He writes a number of blogs including the Online Journalism Blog, Interactive PR and Web and New Media