Citizen journos go pro

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 23 Jun 2006 at 19:25

Industry insiders blogging in their free time may find their efforts rewarded by more than AdWords revenue - a new service called ScooptWords seeks to commercialise that editorial, making it available to publishers for a licence fee.

Scoopt.com already operates a citizen journalism photo agency, where happy snappers can offer their pictorial take on the stories of the day to the publishing industry for a fee. Indeed Scoopt describes itself as a media agency.

Scoopt takes 25 per cent of licensing revenues, but the licences themselves are flexible. Based on Creative Commons, a citizen journalist can dictate how much freedom a publisher has with licensed content - whether they can use it online, and in print, for example, or whether the content is licensed in a different manner for commercial, non-commercial and educational or research purposes.

And using the system is straightforward and free. It's a simple matter of registering your blog or blogs, and adding a Scoopt badge, which potential licencees can click through for all the syndication details.

It's a straightforward service, but with blogging by its very nature a public entity, is there any demand? Blogs are already a well-known and used source for the media industry: journalists don't have a special sauce for editorial that exists purely by virtue of their title, but the most straightforward way for a publisher to benefit from a well-read blogger might be to simply hire them full stop.

Graham Holliday, ScooptWords managing editor, told us: 'The thing is, some blogs - by NO means all - are producing material every bit as good as professional journalists. Our research, and our instinct tells us, some would like a commercial route to market for their words. However, most bloggers are not clued up re: copyright, contracts, fees, territorial rights and the like. That's where we help.

'Those editors who are blog savvy have been very eager to contact us and enquire about what's available now and what will be available down the line. We're still in beta, we only 'stealth' launched a little over two weeks ago... However, we already have a lot of editorial interest and we've made sales. It's all very early days, but we're really happy with the way this is shaping up and the reaction from the bloggers has been overwhelmingly positive.'

To get the full scoop on Scoopt, point your browser at ScooptWords.