In its latest effort to encourage more serious use of YouTube, the online video sharing site owned by Google announced Project: Report.
In partnership with the Pulitzer Center, YouTube presents Project: Report, a journalism contest (made possible by Sony VAIO & Intel) intended for non-professional, aspiring journalists to tell stories that might not otherwise be told. In each of the three rounds, reporters will be given an assignment to complete. Winners of each round will receive technology prizes from Sony VAIO & Intel, and the grand prize winner will be granted a $10,000 journalism fellowship with the Pulitzer Center to report on a story abroad.
I’ve used YouTube to create Sri Lanka’s first and to date only citizen journalism video channel. Using YouTube for over two years, it’s been encouraging to see interface / UI developments, increases in file storage and uploads, better quality, better integration with social networking sites, and more recently, sub-title and multi-lingual narration support. I’ve used a lot of online video sharing sites and while many others give better quality from the get-go, YouTube still wins hands-down on its sheer reach.
Why doesn’t Google add another 0 to the grand prize money pot, and announce reward quality serial news producers with smaller payments capable of sustaining the very draining lifestyle of news content production? It isn’t as if Google doesn’t have a machine in their basement that almost literally prints cash – they’re hands down the largest and most watched company on the Internet that has a hand in video distribution.
Emphasis mine. Video production is hugely resource intensive – both financial and human. A significant challenge to more serious content populating the likes of YouTube is that citizen journalists simply cannot afford to create, edit and upload content that interrogates the world they live in. Mashable’s suggestion addresses this and if adopted by YouTube / Google, could see more professional videos on serious issues competing with the drivel that one often finds on the site.
An Ashoka, Rotary World Peace and TED Fellow, I have since 2002 explored and advocated the use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to strengthen peace, reconciliation,human rights & democratic governance. I founded and for eleven years curated the award winning Groundviews, Sri Lanka's first citizen journalism website. I specialise in, advise and train on new media literacy, web activism, digital security and online advocacy in Sri Lanka and internationally. With the UN and other actors, through the ICT4Peace Foundation, I also work extensively on the advancement of information management during crises, both sudden-onset as well as protracted. For well over a decade, I have trained digital security for activists and journalists in South Asia, South East Asia, Europe and the Balkans and focus on using a wide spectrum technology to capture, disseminate and archive vital stories in austere, violent human rights contexts. I am currently pursuing doctoral studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand on social media and politics.
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