Demotix – The News by You
What is Demotix? from Andy Heath on Vimeo.
I learned about Demotix and if you do not know them, you must. This is the news by the people. Extending the voice to everyone. Do not expect the same coverage than traditional media will offer, but expect to see what you can not find in other places. Lots of pictures and a brief description of the story. Like everything that is open to everyone it holds the risk of abuse, and one may question the truthfulness of some stories, but the advantages and possibilities are incredible. As we are learning from the aftermath of the Iran elections, the people want to tell, and the world wants to know. Demotix aims to enable that.
In addition, Demotix will try to sell your images to traditional media, so your work could reach an even larger audience.
DemotixImages.com, along with an entire sales team, works for one purpose and one purpose only: to get your stories seen the world’s press and to license your photos around the globe.
Demotix is doing an extraordinary job in such a short time. Their coverage of what’’s going on now in Iran is fantastic and is being licensed by major news agencies worldwide.
Even before the elections in Iran their track record for licensing images was very impressive with several front pages in major newspapers and many images licensed for Internet use.
I was actually quite surprised with the immediacy of images licensed after just a few submissions and the monetary return is inline with professional industry norm.
My work on Demotix: http://tinyurl.com/kr6vbr
Nir Alon
http://TIPUSIM. com in Jerusalem
It looks like Demotix has great potential. Something tells me the future of reportage may take a direction like this.
However, they are talking about a spread in The Guardian about the garbage dump in Phnom Penh. First, I just want to note the irony that “new media” is almost MOST excited when they are published in old media. Moving on though, what do you think about the photos? To me they look created in Photoshop. I”ve been to the garbage dump in Phnom Penh, and although I recognize it in those images, they seem (especially the main image) like a comic book representation of reality. Is that where we”re headed?
Also, note the 100 percent gushing feedback in the comments. Is Demotix going to be a Flickr”esque community where everyone is afraid of offending anyone else, because they want to accumulate positive feedback and followers for themselves?
Obviously, a site like Demotix looks visionary when covering a conflict from the perspective of real people on the streets. Way to go on that.
Very interesting to see this kind of agency being formed. It definitely makes sense given the increasing reliance on user-generated content in the news to have something like Demotix that can harness it more effectively than just having a row of CNN journalists scouring tweets on twitter. I think it is normal that for the moment their major excitement is to be featured in traditional media, as this model is still very young and, I imagine, pretty fragile given the state of media of any form at the moment.
On the positive side, the Demotix model can hopefully lead to widening out the incredibly narrow spectrum of what is considered newsworthy and break stories that don”t make it into mainstream news. It could also be great for contributing photographers if it manages to break into the Reuters/AFP monopoly on image feeds.
On the downside, I just don”t see how Demotix is going to be able to effectively verify all of its source material. I also have to agree with Andy: if this thing becomes a huge repository of unfiltered images with flickr-style glowing comments, then is that really going to help anyone get a better understanding of the issues and contribute to critical debates?
Thanks for the thoughtful comments. I think we all see the positives of providing a open way for all to contribute to news, in line with the current reality, and the caveat of having an open system where anyone can contribute.
The future of Demotix will rely on how well is able to balance the quality, truthfulness and reliability of the images and stories. Perhaps a user based monitoring for quality will work, but I fear that something else, some sort of editing, may be required.
Another question for Demtix is how will balance between becoming an agency that distributes images and stories to old media, versus becoming a legit channel of news itself. Which path Demotix will favor is still to be seen.
Thanks again,
Miguel