Nowpublic

http://www.nowpublic.com/

Type: Citizen journalism website Age: ?? Nationality: Canadian Nowpublic is a news organisation with tens of thousands of correspondents around the world who break news daily. For free. This "participatory news network" allows members to share first-hand news in real time. (A journalism qualification is completely optional.) To date, it has 88,000 contributors in more than 3,300 cities around the world. For every story that breaks - from the war in Lebanon to the Virginia Tech shootings - Nowpublic has someone on the scene voluntarily filing reports, while it's happening. "During Hurricane Katrina, we had 2,000 people in the affected area," said co-founder Michael Tippett. "That's more than Reuters has worldwide." The majors have taken note of Nowpublic’s reach and are clamouring to be part of it - currently the website has a deal to share resources with Associated Press.

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Q&A with NowPublic's founders, Michael Tipett and Leonard Brody

Why did you start nowpublic?
Brody: The company was built on the premise that as you had more people with cameras and video cameras and digital cameras on their phones, you were going to see more and more news breaking then ever before. The old-world concept of mainstream media controlling first-to-see news was going to be flipped on its head and there was going to be a huge need for a new entity to handle that. That's why we started the company.

How has the web changed citizen journalism?
Brody: We're more from an era where people where traditionally spoken to by the regular mainstream news organizations. Now we're moving to the speak-and-not-spoken-to generation. Nowpublic allows the average Jane or Joe to contribute to the news cycle and be part of the actual news gathering process.

What do you tell people who might question your website's credibility?
Tippett: The concept of truth and integrity in journalism, in some respects, is a bit of smoke and mirrors. Look at what happened to Reuters, with the doctored photos through Lebanon. When you look at crowdsourcing, it gets a much more efficient result than one editor and one writer.

When did you realize that the web had power?
Brody: Through pornography (laughs). I realized it in the 90s, when I started contributing to bulletin boards and getting on listserves and the early days of AOL. I just realized that more and more information was going to be more and more valuable. I always looked at human beings fundamentally as being people who wanted to connect and people that were interested in maintaining as much information as they could as quickly as possible. So the web was going to be the best leveler to get over the traditional obstacles to do that.

Seeing that you and your employees spend a lot of time on the web, are you lenient when it comes to viewing porn in the office?
Tippett: We have an open concept office. It'd be a little embarrassing if someone wanted to watch porn. Brody: That's why me and Mike have closed offices.

Top three more creative people on the web:

Michael Tippett:

1. Evan Williams of Twitter.
2. Philip Rosedale of Second Life.
3. Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel, Michael Breidenbruecker and Thomas Willomitzer of Last.fm.

Leonard Brody:

1. Marc Canter of Broadband Mechanics and the People Aggregator.
2. Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake of Flickr
3. Austin Hill of Akoha.

Interview by Elianna Lev