Yahoo and Reuters Seek Camera Phone Images for News Service

Permalink: Yahoo and Reuters Seek Camera Phone Images for News Service by Brian Turner

Yahoo and Reuters are launching a new service which could turn the millions of people with digital cameras and camera phones into photojournalists. Amateur photographers will be able to submit their digital news photos and videos to the service.

These may then be placed throughout Reuters.com and Yahoo News. Reuters also plans to distribute some of the submissions to print, online and broadcast media outlets which subscribe to its news service. Reuters aims to develop a service devoted entirely to user-submitted photographs and video.

The project is inline with the growth of ‘citizen journalism’, with bloggers setting up local news sites. Photographs taken by amateurs have been used extensively to supplement coverage of events such as the London subway bombing and the Asian tsunami. Yahoo’s news division has already used images that were originally posted on Flickr, the company’s photo-sharing site.

The Yahoo-Reuters project will develop a method of incorporating images covering a wider range of topics into news coverage. Users will be able to upload photos and videos to a section of Yahoo called You Witness News (news.yahoo.com/page/youwitnessnews). The submissions will appear on Flickr or a similar site for video and will be reviewed by editors at both Reuters and Yahoo.

Photos selected for use will be placed on pages with relevant news articles. The photographers of the images displayed on the Yahoo and Reuters sites will not receive a fee, but people whose photos or videos are selected for distribution to Reuters’ clients will be paid.