A global digital media network (Entry 8)

That there's the tagline of DigitalJournal.com, and this is a screenshot of the site. Digital Journal is one of the many citizen journalism sites out there, but to me it seems to be one of the better and more professional ones out there.

One thing about them that sets them apart from most other citizen journalism sites is that they QC their writers. In order to be approved to contribute to the site, you have to submit a "resume" article to show that you're a writer of quality before you're allowed to contribute regularly. This serves to control the quality of articles featured and increases the credibility of the website in general. Non-approved users can still contribute, but only via uploading photos and blogging. When it comes to articles, only quality ones are featured.

At first, I thought that this defeated the purpose of citizen journalism, since not all people that want to contribute are allowed to. Then again, it's not about the sheer number of contributors, but how pervasive and spread out they are, to ensure that there is wide and instant coverage. How normal news agents and wire services work is that they get information mainly from PR agencies, other news sources or on-the-ground reporters. With citizen journalism, these on-the-ground reporters are literally everywhere. There's always news coming from the ground.

Another thing that's cool about Digital Journal is that they pay people who contribute, based on how popular or successful their reports. They mainly draw revenue from ads, and they're willing to share that revenue with contributors. This, I suppose, will get more people to contribute, which would make the website more rich and useful, which would increase traffic and increase ad revenue, so that makes sense.

The only thing that I'm bummed about is that there isn't that much about Singapore-based news. Admittedly, we're a 'small market', and so we would need a dedicated local citizen journalism site. Something better than STOMP please. STOMP is now just a place for people to bitch about ugly behavior.