Citizen Foreign Correspondents?

After a bout with the flu I am now re-joining the bloggosphere. Thanks to our classmate Nikki Usher for sending me a link to Nicholas Kristof's recent blog about a new citizen journalism website where we can all become foreign correspondents. In his blog Kristof introduces us to a site called Demotix. Demotix, which set up shop in January 2009, is essentially an online, international, multimedia, newswire service. The site is named after 'Demotic,' the form of writing used and most easily understood by the man on the street in Alexandrian Egypt in 200 BC. The word Demotic meaning, 'of the people.' The people behind Demotix say they hope to open up journalism to the people in the modern age, just as the demotic script opened up writing in Ancient Egypt. They say they're filling the void left by the death of newspapers and old-fashioned on-the-ground reporting. With only four U.S. newspapers maintaining a foreign desk, they may be onto something. Their goal? To provide a place for anyone -- freelance journalists, citizen journalists, and people who just happen to be at the right place at the right time to upload world news photos and video, search for it and comment on it. The good news for freelancers is that they pay you. It works like this; you retain the copyright, they broker the photos and videos across all platforms for you and then Demotix and you split the fee, 50/50. They say they can get anywhere from $50-$3,000, depending on demand. And if you just happen to get something really hot, like say a great photo of a historic moment, they claim the pay could potentially range into the $100,000.00 range! Demotix also has an interesting blog where they invite people to discuss the pluses and minuses of citizen journalism. I was only down with the flu for about a week, but it feels as if in that short time the fault lines of journalism could have made some massive fundamental shifts. And Demotix might be ahead of the game.