Network to pay citizen reporters
GetLocalNews.com, a nationwide network of 6,000 local news sites, is going to start paying its thousands of volunteer writers by sharing ad revenue.
The network will take an approach similar to About.com and pay the "volunteer" writers based on how much traffic they generate. The company publishes up to 4,000 stories a day and its most frequently visited site, BeniciaNews.com gets up to 500,000 page views per month.
The company will pay writers half the net ad sales their stories garner, based on each story's page views. Canon expects it to work out to about $2 to $5 per 1,000 page views. The company will send checks quarterly to all writers that rack up $25 or more in payments. More details on the site here.
"I think the writing-for-free thing is kind of demeaning to content producers," said Edgar Canon, chief executive of the San Francisco company.
This is a lingering question in the citizen media movement -- to what degree will volunteers be willing to write for free, especially as the publications they write for start to make money off their work.
The continuing trend toward paying volunteer "citizen journalists" also raises the question of whether they're really volunteers if they're getting paid.
Apr 11, 2005 | E-MAIL | SAVE | PRINT | PERMALINK | DISCUSS(0)
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