user-generated content

Here's an interesting bit of info from 901am.com:

MixerCast announced that it has signed licensing deals with known content providers to allow its users to legally combine professionally-produced videos, music and images with their own content and hyper-syndicate the rich media mashups on the Internet. Instead of broadcasting pre-packaged channels of content through a traditional media network model, MixerCast makes it easy for consumers to create, distribute and remix content from a variety of sources by using a rich set of editing and publishing tools, ad-infused and product- placement-ready templates, and open access to a large library of studio content. Users can monetize their creative work by proactively adding advertising into their MixerCast content packages as they virally spread across the web, which are then tracked by a robust set of built-in measurement systems.

“With the debut of MixerCast, people now have an easy way to fuse their own content with legal studio content and create custom Web channels, movies, music videos, photo galleries or personal RSS feeds. It’s like having your own personal broadcast station with access to high-quality licensed content so you can create context and a much richer experience,” said Jennifer Cooper, MixerCast CEO, who recently left Yahoo! to co-found and lead the company. “Our vision is to drive the next big wave of syndicated content and advertising on the Web. It’s no longer about simply serving up ads based on search keywords. With MixerCast, highly-engaged users mix, monetize and network their interactive productions. Users can also include licensed, branded content when they share or post their Mixercasts via email, their favorite sites or blogs.”

What do you think of this form of content syndication and networked "interactive productions"? Does this apply to our considerations for CS film distribution?

Since 1927 TIME has produced a "Person of the Year" issue to decree the most influential person or persons in the news. At 200 pages this edition in the Person of the Year series was their longest issue ever. The decision to choose "You," as the biggest newsmaker of 2006 has already made waves through the blogosphere.
Some decreed it a stunt for readers, others too little too late.

So NewAssignment.Net went to the TIME/Life building in New York and sat down with Stephen Koepp, TIME magazine's deputy managing editor, to find out about the back story to this choice and how they are reacting to all the hoopla.

NewAssignment.Net: How did Time settle on giving "You" the award? Was it highly debated by the editorial staff or did everyone agree right away?

Stephen Koepp: There is a process for gathering information. We get suggestions from all our bureaus and bring them back, and they are finalists. Then there is a phase of preliminary reporting and we see where the news goes. At the end of the process we got enough to do several person of the year projects. The final decision is made by the Managing editor Richard Stengel.

The question you are asking -- was it a consensus. There is a debate. And the managing editor knows what people think, but he makes the call essentially.

NAN: Who were the runners up?

There's a scene in the 1998 movie The Big Lebowski when Jeff Bridges’ perpetually baked character, "The Dude," finds himself staring at his reflection in the mirrored cover of Time magazine's "Man of the Year" issue. But "The Dude" is the last person to do something noteworthy enough for a spot on newsstands. Link together millions of real life dudes, dorks, geeks and dabblers through the Internet and they start looking a lot more influential – enough to end up as 2006’s biggest newsmaker.

This year, Time picked “You” as its Person of the Year. “You”—or, more accurately, “We”—have earned the recognition of these old media stalwarts.

The cover decision was not entirely unexpected (NewAssignment.Net, among others, reported on it back in November) and Time has been known to lean toward the gimmicky before, but this selection is remarkable nonetheless. When an old lion of big media like Time turns to recognize the collective contributions of bloggers, Wikipedians, and open source programmers, it’s some sort of milestone, a clear indication that the Great Man theory is in demise.

Dan Gillmor at the Center for Citizen Media made an interesting observation about the magazine’s choice of words. “There’s a tiny bit of reality in the fact that the cover didn’t say "Us" instead of ‘You,’” he wrote. “In part because it was a vestige of the magazine’s traditional, royal thinking wherein they told us everything and we bought it or didn’t. If the people of the year are all of you, that leaves ‘we the deciders of what is news’ still inside the gates.”

This is precisely why NewAssignment.Net considers this an award for the collective "We" not just an external "You."

The latest buzz circulating through Web forums has a group of media companies teaming up to develop a YouTube killer. PaidContent.org has a nice wrap-up of the developing rumor here.

"The theory is that if you were to aggregate enough exclusive content in one place, you could actually change viewing patterns," says an executive familiar with the cross-company talks.

Yet all the reports miss one important factor in YouTube's success. The strength of YouTube isn't the mass of copyrighted material and television shows, many of which have been purged. Rather, it's the loyal community of viewers and users who upload content. That's what Google was buying and what other media companies don't have.

Secret Radio Project is not a secret. Next April, 89.5 FM WBEW, one of Chicago Public Radio's three frequencies will begin a completely new and ambitious format. Most of the content will be user-generated.

"What if we had no shows? With no packaged comments?" Torey Malatia, president and general manager of CPR, asked TimeOut Chicago in an interview earlier this year. The answer? Nobody knows.

Without typical hour-long programs, the noncommercial station will instead rely on hosts to navigate two-hour time blocks based on their own musings, but they will be expected to incorporate user audio as well.

Acknowledging that “citizen journalism has forced news organizations to change the way they do business,” news site OnMilwaukee.com announced last month it would invite readers to launch their own blogs on all things Milwaukeean.

So how are they faring? Ironically, publisher Andy Tarnoff predicted the news site’s biggest problem in his inaugural article: "There's only one problem: with millions of random blogs floating around out there, how do you fight through the clutter?"

Despite its forward-thinking aims, OnMilwaukee.com has yet to solve the problem.

About 50 million Americans have added their original content to the Internet's bounty. Most haven't seen a dime.

Five of the ten fastest growing brands on the Web rely on users for content. Most, like MySpace, Flickr and Heavy.com, do not pay their contributors. But the tide may be changing towards systems of compensation. Interestingly, citizen journalism sites are leading the paradigm shift and main-stream media organizations are taking these as small cues.

With the notable exception of video marketplace Revver, citizen or 'open journalism' ventures are showing the greatest innovation in business models that compensate contributors.

It makes sense—they've 'opened' up every other aspect of journalism, from researching to editing and writing, why not the revenue too?

(Disclosure: This very question compelled me to found GroundReport, an open news site with revenue sharing, in June 2006.)

If a multitude of sites offer effective tools for uploading and sharing content, a distinguishing factor may soon be the rewards they offer back to their lifeblood: contributing users.

One way to categorize the different systems is to divide them into fixed and fluid models.

The BBC's coverage of the July 7th London bombings last year was a turning point for citizen journalism. In 24 hours it received 20,000 e-mails, 1,000 photos and 20 videos, according to editor and then acting head of BBC News Interactive Pete Clifton.

And last week the BBC announced it will pay for user-generated content that is "editorially important or unique."

The BBC staff has a new set of guidelines allowing them to make payments to citizen journalists who send in photos or video, but adds that "audiences should not be encouraged to think that payment is the norm."

While the BBC stressed it doesn't want citizens to put themselves in dangerous situations, some say it won't "take very long before BBC employees start hinting out loud about the pictures they’d like to see from the 'civilians.'" For now, it looks like BBC editors will have a new set of decisions to wrestle with –- figuring out what user-generated content fits the bill and how much that bill should be.

The announcement, while cautious, is another step towards a pro-am style of news. And hopefully not only will the quality of the news increase, but the relationship of the reader to the news will be strengthened as well.

Take Leonard Witt's experience when he became a citizen journalist 30 years ago. He still has vivid memories of a Vietnam War parade where he filmed a skirmish between Teamsters and a hippie. The photos were sold to the New York Daily News for a whopping $10. I suspect, however, the next time Witt read about a protest that ended in violence he had a deeper appreciation of what went into reporting that story.