City University in London is offering a full-time “Sky News – City University Studentship in Citizen Media / User-Generated Content”
to explore concepts around citizen journalism in the mainstream news media, using a case study approach and participant observation. For the first year of their PhD the appointee will work closely with Sky News on an innovative project to recruit several hundred “citizen journalists” to report on the next UK general election campaign. The project aims to allow contributors to do more than simply give their opinion; instead they will be expected to write stories, take pictures and possibly record video.
A great opportunity for the right person…
Note to media organizations in the U.S.: There are undoubtedly universities (I can think of at least a couple, cough cough) that would welcome such a project at the masters-degree level.
on Aug 20th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
well, it seems like the “opportunity” is really for “Sky News”… let’s see… a PD student (for what looks like peanuts) would spend her time figuring out how to get *hundreds* of unpaid people to do all sort of work (“not simply opinion”) and just deliver the suckers to the profit-making “Sky News” — yeah, sounds like “a great cause”… “a great opportunity”… we should spread this “marvelous idea” to academia — Rupert Murdock NEEDS the help… everybody help!
IF Sky News was a non-profit and this was a way to provide
good journalism for the community it would serve (so people doing the work would knowingly and willing want to volunteer to help the community in this way) and other non-profits would be allowed to use the model… it would be a very different story…
Delia
P.S. Dan, I think you should tell your readers what you *really* think about this stuff — I mean, at least a couple of times you seemed to imply if not disgust something of that sort towards such “arrangements,” yet your own early projects tried to do the same thing, didn’t they?
It’s unclear to me (and I suspect to plenty of other people) if at this point you think people *should* get paid or if you are just hoping somebody else figures out how to get good work for nothing and pocket all the profits… D.
on Aug 21st, 2007 at 6:17 am
Delia–
It’s an opportunity: Somebody may want to do it. As PhD’s go, it’s less mind-numbing than running regressions on the number of votes per household per shire, so it may be fun.
Life is governed by incentives, but incentives are more varied than money.
Jon
on Aug 21st, 2007 at 7:17 am
Jon,
Even if you could get *somebody* to do it… (it seems like you alway *could* — no matter how unfair, exploitative etc.) it seems sick to promote something like this… (especially to get the academia to become accomplice to this — they could and *should* do much much better)…
re: “a PD student (for what looks like peanuts) would spend her time figuring out how to get *hundreds* of unpaid people to do all sort of work (”not simply opinion”) and just deliver the suckers to the profit-making “Sky News” — yeah, sounds like “a great cause”… “a great opportunity”…
I fail to see how this arrangement could possibly be “fun” or anything of the kind…
see also:”IF Sky News was a non-profit and this was a way to provide
good journalism for the community it would serve (so people doing the work would knowingly and willing want to volunteer to help the community in this way) and other non-profits would be allowed to use the model… it would be a very different story…”
Delia
P.S. anyways, I think I’ve had enough of Dan’s blog… if an answer to that question cannot be had (please let me know if he ends up clarifying the issue…) otherwise, take care! D.