Should CNN Pay it’s iReporters?

The major news suppliers have been making a lot of noise lately about how “people” should pay more for the news that they are supplying.  They argue that news is expense to report and if the “people” don’t pay for it than the “people” will simply now longer have any news.

That’s absurd, of course, but that hasn’t stopped the AP from threatening bloggers kind enough to link to their content or stopped a possibly illegal meeting of newspaper execs colluding over erecting paywalls.

Now comes the official uprising of the citizen journalist in Iran and one really has to begin to wonder just how much longer the traditional news model can last.  According to Beet.TV:

CNN’s iReport has been getting many uploads about the Iran crisis, about 4600 over the past week, including 1600 last weekend alone. While these user-generated videos go up on the site without filtering, CNN producers vet these videos for use on the air and on CNN.com

The network has pulled 150 user generated clips from iReport, we have been told by a CNN spokesperson.    LINK

That’s right, CNN is using over 150 clips of reporting they did not create OR pay anything to broadcast.  Yes, people voluntarily sent in their clips and I am sure they clicked on a box giving CNN the rights to do anything they wanted with that footage without providing any compensation but one has to wonder how much longer that concept will work.

There seems to be a great opportunity for a savvy team to start a competing citizen news web site that pays its “iReporters” for exclusive rights to their content.  CNN might currently have a bigger audience but we all know the potential audience online is impossible to rival.

If anyone is interested in joining forces to start just such a competing site, drop me a line.  Together we can take down CNN/FOX/MSNBC!

YouTube the New Local News?

As I learned on Beet.TV:

Just about a week ago, YouTube introduced a new functionality which surfaces up local news video which corresponds to the location of the user’s IP address.

This is a pretty cool little innovation that could eventually become a serious source for local news and events.  Right now, the service is limited to videos uploaded to the “news” catagory which is a little bit of a bummer but means the selections won’t be overrun by completely irrelevant content.  It also means that, for now, the majority of the content is resourced TV content.  However, it has the potential to become a hub for citizen journalists and those looking for coverage from a very local source.

With more people gaining access to video-capabable phone able to post nearly seamlessly to YouTube the possibilities start to become very compelling.

Even more exciting on the theoretical but not too far off front (yes, that’s a front) is the growth of phones with the ability to use services like Qik to literally live-stream to the web from virtually anywhere in the world.  Imagine whole populations with these sorts of abilities and the idea of tuning in for the news takes on a completely different meaning.

Web Indies Still Looking for the Money

There are a couple of posts out there this week that look at just what, if any, money independent web content producers are making.

Over on Gawker they talk to Yuri Baranovsky, the writer for Break a Leg, an original web comedy produced by the guys at For Your Imagination.

“Here’s how it all breaks down: with over 2 million views on YouTube, we’ve received roughly $1,600 from their Partner Program. We also over half a million views at YouTube competitor Blip.tv, worth a whopping $100. Finally another competitor MetaCafe featured us on their front page and with nearly 100,000 views, we made $500 – which is great, except the only way you’ll ever get that many views is if you win a contest (like us) or your show is primarily about how round and pretty the female breast is. Plus a year later, MetaCafe still hasn’t paid us.”

At first glance that seems like very little money for so many views and it is, kind of.  The thing is, these are cumulative numbers for multiple episodes.  Before real money can be made these shows need to be getting at least 500,000 per episode.  At least that puts them into the low-end cable numbers.

Over on TVWeek they compare early-adopter and cash-success story Ask-A-Ninja, high-end vloggers BeetTV and life-caster iJustine.

The short story is $100,000/month for Ninja, $15,000/month for BeetTV and $1000/month for iJustine.  Each of these projects has a different set of costs so it is not clear how much they are actually putting in their pockets.

Any way you cut it, the web content game is not a get-rich quick scheme.  However, there is tons of opportunity out there and we’re only seeing the beginning in terms of people trying to tap the market.

Funny Web Video NOT Funny

Wow, NewTeeVee’s Chris Albrecht is on a tear. First, he has this rather tongue-in-cheek guide for those looking to make their own funny web videos:

“1. Use Webcams
Your show is online, and so is your character, thanks to your webcam! So meta. Sure, this method of storytelling has lost all its novelty, but what better way to dispense with showing us any action than by having the main character describe the action in their vlog?

Steal from: lonelygirl15, Dorm Life, quarterlife”

He’s got five more gems in the post.

Then Chris is on BeetTV with some more thoughts on this developing genre and let’s just say he’s not all that impressed.  His main feeling is that there is certainly a glut right now of comedy-centric sites and that this leads to a lot of scattershot content.

Check out the whole interview here.

Podcast Alternative in the Air

BeetTV has a look at the new Adobe Air video player.  I haven’t really had a chance to play around with this yet but it sounds like it could be another viable option in the growing world of distribution possibilities.

“Unlike podcasts, which are downloaded and saved as files along with some enclosed metadata, the new AMP environment will appear as a sort of rich, Web-like environment.  It is on the desktop, but connected to the Web and updated via RSS.”