CitJo aims to make citizen reports accessible to news agencies Egyptian company CitJo have officially launched their online platform, www.citjo.com, a citizen journalism portal which connects citizen journalists with media agencies worldwide. The first of its kind in Egypt, CitJo provides an innovative local news source in addition tothe ability for citizen journalists to sell their photos and videos.
Citizen journalists, freelance journalists, activists and other contributors can now upload their photos and videos to www.citjo.com, set a price, and if they are picked up my news agencies, get paidfor their content.
"Uniquely to make life easier for the user, they can also connect to their twitter account and from then on, if they upload a photo/video to twitter, hashtag their tweet with #CitJo to be able to index and sell it on www.citjo.com. The price and licence for which is set in their account settings," said the company.
Contributors can also choose to share their citizen journalism photos or videos using a Creative Commons license or share for viewing only (using the "All Rights Reserved" license).
Local, regional and international news and media agencies, looking for the next big story or trying to find pictures or videos for a past event, can search CitJo's archives and purchase the photos and videos at the price set by contributors.As one of the top 20 finalists in the Google Ebda2 competition, the founders, Mahamad El Tanahy & Sarah Wali are "looking to change the news cycle and transform this by merging with social media".
"Our aim is to provide an easy way for citizen journalists to get the word out, and generate revenue for the journalist. We're looking to provide all the features necessary to make citizen journalists lives easier. Starting with a migration of the service to Arabic, launch of the online payment service and much more to come...News agencies will themselves be able to utilize our service to filter through citizen journalism content easily and purchase content for the price set by citizens," said Mahamad El Tanahy, Managing Director of CitJo.