Demotix: The citizen-based future of photojournalism?
About John Smock
John Smock is a visiting professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, teaching photojournalism and interactive journalism. 
According to founder Turi Munthe Demotix is a “street wire” or “virtual photo agency” specializing in international breaking news coverage. For the more than 8,000 contributors to the citizen-based photo website it’s an opportunity to showcase and perhaps sell work. For the rest of us it’s the latest example of an industry in transition experimenting with innovative ways to provide visual news coverage.
Demotix started early last year. It quickly gained notice by landing a photo shot by a protester of the disputed presidential election in Iran on the front page of The New York Times. Soon after, the site distributed the only photo of a handcuffed Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. during his arrest. The image was featured on CNN, CBS, and in the Washington Post and a dozen other publications, earning more than $4000 for the photographer and agency.
But the occasional big sale is not in itself enough to sustain Demotix as a business (Demotix is not yet profitable). It will be a substantial challenge for the site to establish itself as a money-making, go-to shop for crowd-sources news images, especially when those images have a very limited shelf life or commercial value. To make things even tougher, the competition is often well-established social networking sites such as Flickr and Twitpic.
The idea behind a citizen-based news photo site is pretty straightforward. In a world filled with people carrying digital cameras and with access to the Internet, citizens on the scene of disasters, bombings or other events can submit photos to Demotix for speedy distribution to top-tier news outlets. Like many traditional photo agencies Demotix offers a 50/50 split (photographer retains the copyright to the images). But unlike many traditional agencies in an era of cutback and shrinking budgets, the site’s price structure isn’t prohibitively expensive.
Munthe and Demotix aren’t the first to try the idea. Several citizen-based or crowd-sourced photo and video agencies have come and gone. Most recently Scoopt, a citizen-based photo site featuring news and entertainment photography, opened, sold to Getty Images and then was shuttered. Others such as Cell Journalist and Spy Media limp along.
Demotix will also have to navigate the same tough issues that news organizations covering conflict and disasters have always faced — the safety of its photographers (most of the site’s content is submitted by a core group of contributors) and the voracity of the images and accompanying caption info. The site posts guidelines for its contributors to help ensure safety and accuracy.
Whether Demotix succeeds or fails, it has driven the discussion about citizen-based photojournalism forward. In an article for the journalism.co.uk Kyle MacRae, the founder of Scoopt, wrote that he is skeptical of the future of destination photo sites and envisions a rights-managed, one-click model through photo-based social networking sites like Flickr. At Idea Lab citizen journalism advocate Dan Gillmor wrote that he thinks the future might be in automated auctions in which a premium is paid for timeliness and authenticity.
What do you think?
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by » Demotix: The citizen-based future of photojournalism? | Digital … RWPS
on 09. Feb, 2010
Good article. One point of clarification though – Cell Journalist transitioned the business model to provide tools for local tv stations/newspapers that allow their audience to send in images/videos and is working with 80+ local outlets across the country.
Trying to build a sustainable business from one time events is going to be difficult for Demotix and others. The audience is very happy to share that content with their local media outlets.
This citizen media space is changing quickly, so stay tuned!
by parker
on 09. Feb, 2010
Wish I knew the details about how Demotix works two weeks earlier when I was tweeting my photos from Port-au-Prince! Great and useful article.
by Aash Jethra
on 18. Feb, 2010
Dear John,
Most of this article reads like a rehash of the PBS piece, which was only very lightly researched.
We’re a very different proposition to the one you describe! We aim to become the AP of freelancers – only bigger, quicker, deeper, broader, more local and more global, and a lot more democratic. We’re not about single scoops (though they do very well when they happen), we’re about daily sales of images and shortly video to the mainstream media.
Individual photojournalists are having a harder and harder time of it. By bringing photojournalists, and (soon) video-journalists and reporters together, we not only help them make money with one-off sales, but we also pull them into a collective photo wire-feed that is expanding its reach to media outlets throughout the world. There’s strength in numbers – we are far more together than the sum of our parts.
You’ll see a detailed article about Demotix by me in the forthcoming Nieman Report for March, but I’d also be happy – if you’re interested – in talking with you to explain how we work.
I’ll be in NY for the whole of the week of 8th March, if you want to meet.
All best
Turi
by Turi
on 24. Feb, 2010