Does the world need yet another place for people to upload their video and stills? Well, it’s got one and it might just have more of an impact than most

Beckett, Charlie

LSE Research Online

demotix.bmpdemotix2.jpg2008-8-5Demotix: The Global Citizen Wireblogs.lse.ac.uk /polis/2008/08/05/demotix-the-global-citizen-wire/Does the world need yet another place for people to upload their video and stills? Well, it’s got one and itmight just have more of an impact than most. Demotix sells itself thus:“Think of it like Flickr or YouTube, but only for original photo/video news. They/You tell us what isgoing on, we tell the WWW and the world’s mainstream media.”It certainly has some interesting and topical stuff. Other sites that offer independent material from around the worldare often out of date or geographically very selective. Demotix seems to have more variety.Today for examle, the latest pictures are of a shot-down Chadian helicopter and an anti-FARCdemo.It’s good stuff, although often off-beat and colourful rather than front-page grabbing.Crucially it is trying to network itself in to mainstream media. I found out about it viaTelegraph “assistant editor responsible for work flows” Justin Williams, because his paper has signed up for theDemotix feed.So I can see that the business model might work. I can see that it’s easier for a mainstream news picture editor thanjust combing through YouTube or Flickr every morning. And it’s better for the contributers because they might getpaid. This is the deal:Basic, non-exclusive rights to your photos will sell for anything between $80 and $1,600 USD.* Non-exclusive rights to your video: $500-600/minute* Exclusive rights: whatever we can get. And some photos and videos can go for $100,000s. In allcases, you get exactly 50%.:* you retain the copyright* we broker them exclusively across all spaces* we split the feeI guess the main problem will be whether there’s enough demand for all this. Not all mainstream news sites cancover all the world all the time. But Demotix point out that with Foreign Bureaux being closed they can supply what’smissing.Copyright © 2014 London School of Economics and Political Science1/1

Demotix: the global citizen wire

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