Guidelines on Editorial Photos
Editorial photos are used in News stories. A News story can be about news, sports, entertainment or any subject matter where legitimate mass media reaches an anonymous audience. “Anonymous” is defined as available to anyone in the coverage area. “Coverage area” is defined as local geographical distribution for print media and worldwide distribution for media on the internet.
An editorial photo is any photo used to illustrate or enhance a news story and are photos that have been taken without the consent of the person/place/thing/event in the photo. So, simply put, it is a photo that has been used editorially. So then, how do we define “editorial use” of a photo? Normally acceptable editorial uses include:
- Newspaper & magazine articles and stories which are associated with the image(s) used. Books as well provided the photo(s) used are about the topic.
- Internet (web) and mobile articles and stories which are associated with the photo(s) used.
- Broadcast shows and programs which are associated with the photo(s) used.
The use of a photo for other than the above falls into the realm of “commercial use,” which can be defined as the for-profit usage or inclusion of a person/place/thing/event to promote, influence public opinion of a product, service or idea. If this is done without a release from the person/place/thing/event subject, this constitutes invasion of privacy. If this is done without the authorization of the person/place/thing/event where the action took place, it may also constitute an illegal use of this image.
fizwoz is the first online media marketplace for users who have captured editorial photos using their mobile phones to sell their content to local, national and international news organizations.
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Let the Camera Phone Wars Begin!
Since the release of the original iPhone, companies such as Nokia, Mortorola, and HTC have been competing to cut into the all mighty Apple cell phone market share in the U.S. When Google announced that it had developed a cell phone operating system, one thing became clear, the Android software would give the iPhone a run for its money. Though Google has not come out with a purely Google phone as of yet (Nexus One is still manufactured by HTC), they have instead been working with a number of cell phone manufactures who have been using the Android software allowing for multiple cell phone releases complete with the Google touch in a short period of time.
The most recent of the so called “Google phones”, the Nexus One, has clearly taken aim at disrupting the iPhone from the top spot. The Nexus One has significant upgrades from that of it’s predecessors, making it a faster, easier to use and a significant threat to the iPhone.
One of the main features in which the Nexus One trumps the iPhone is the Camera. In a article written by Josh Lowensohn on CNET, he compared the Nexus One camera directly to that of the iPhone in a “Camera Showdown.” The winner, you guessed it, the Nexus One. Though this may not have come as a surprise as the Nexus One was released 6 months after the iPhone 3GS, it has shown one thing: Camera quality will become a major focus in cell phone releases.
LED camera flashes and expected to launch the next generation of the iPhone as early as May, 2010, supposedly with a 5 Mega Pixel camera and the ability to run on a 4G network, one can only imagine what other camera capabilities this next phone will have. It seems Apple has realized that in order to maintain their dominance, there had to be a major upgrade to the 3 Mega Pixel, no flash camera that currently resides on the iPhone, but is an upgrade to a 5 Mega Pixel camera enough?
With Google and Apple grabbing all the Cell Phone media spotlight, one may overlook some of the most powerful camera phones on the market. A perfect example of this would be the Nokia N900, which blows both the Nexus One and the iPhone out of the water with a 14.4 Mega Pixel Camera.
As technology continues to improve, so will our cell phones. They have begun to take on new roles as our GPS, calendar, e-reader, and even our camera. In the past, these may have been seen as “fun, but unnecessary features,” but today those same features are seen as critical to the success of the next generation of cell phones.
What cell phone features will you be looking for in 2010?
UPDATE:
We at fizwoz are very excited to see Blackberry continue to participate in the “camera phone war,” and look forward to the images our users will be able to achieve with these new upgrades in the future.
Winner of Contest at CES: Do You fiz?
Katie Deng was the winner of the “do you fiz?” contest at CES in Las Vegas! She won $100 in the town where the “house always wins.” From winning contests to winning bids, everyone wins with fizwoz. This is the beginning of a lucrative relationship with Katie Deng as she is now a true fizer, selling her cell phone photos and videos online on the fizwoz marketplace. Congratulations Katie!
Samsung CL80 Closing the Gap Between Cell Phones and High Powered Cameras
At first sight, you may think the Samsung CL80 unveiled at CES is just another touch screen camera. On a closer look, you might think that it is a cell phone that happens to come equipped with a high powered camera. As you start to play with the device, it becomes clear: This is as close to a true camera phone as you can get, the only thing missing… the phone.
This camera has the ability to shoot 12.2 MP photos, shoot 720 P video and 7x zoom. Sound like your average camera? “Try this feature list: Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 3.7-inch AMOLED touchscreen and an onscreen QWERTY keyboard. That sounds more like a high-end phone than a camera. Clearly Samsung has brought its phone experience to the game.” Read More http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/01/samsung-cl80-more-like-a-cellphone-than-a-camera/#ixzz0c2ivC6KN
Though Samsung may have decided to stay out of the Cell Phone game on this one, we at fizwoz think that a Camera such as the CL80 will only increase the quality and quantity of citizen journalist content. Who knows, next year they may add the phone capability (and hopefully the fizwoz app)…
From Print to Online: the Newspaper’s Quest for Real-Time Media
Many readers have begun to shift from printed newspapers to online news. This trend has almost every news service scrambling to reinvent the way in which they deliver news to the average consumer. The old model of readers getting their daily dose of news at the beginning of the day with a clunky paper and cup of coffee just doesn’t cut it anymore. Why you may ask? A few reasons. In this day and age, the younger generation has become accustomed to real time information. Why would I want to read a newspaper that is full of news from yesterday when I can pull up thousands of news stories on the internet that are happening today, with video providing sound and moving pictures?
It is this delay in information delivery that is becoming increasingly unacceptable, leading most people to seek up to date information on the internet. Now you may say, as my grandmother would, that the news stories on the internet are not as “in depth” as the articles in the paper. Though this may be true if you are reading the news posts on twitter, but for every news worthy event there are hundreds if not thousands of versions of that same article. Most of the versions in fact come from the same newspaper that you will be reading tomorrow morning. The difference is I will be able to talk about it at lunch, while print readers will have to wait until their coffee break tomorrow morning.
With the emergence of e-readers from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Sony and soon from Hearst, newspaper companies may finally have the tool to help bridge the gap between print readers and online readers. The Hearst Skiff reader, that will be shown at CES for example, will even give the reader an “e-paper that uses a sheet of stainless-steel foil which can be bent” as mentioned in this article from the business insider. This feature will give the user that more realistic “paper” feeling that so many have become to love, while at the same time allowing the user to download magazines, news and books via wi-fi.
Also, critically important is the change in the way that news services obtain their content as well. As the definition of breaking news has changed from what happen yesterday to what happened this hour, news companies have begun to rely on their viewers to assist in reporting and uncovering breaking news segments. An example of this is how CNN used iReport to cover stories in the last presidential election and to follow the Iranian protests. By allowing the users to share their experiences, CNN was able to get breaking news as it happened, often accompanied by a photo or even a video.
As it has become increasingly difficult and expensive to have news crew covering breaking news event around the world, the average citizen has become a new way for news media to have someone at the scene with a cell phone as their camera to capture the content. As has been demonstrated time and time again, these citizens are often in the right place at the right time to capture the event on their cell phone by taking a picture or even a video. Most if not all news companies would be willing to bid for the rights to use photos or videos of that “decisive moment” that captures the event.
Till now, most of the agencies have been able to use this footage for free as it has been posted to Youtube or Twitterpic by the public without compensation for the citizen journalist who captured the content.
fizwoz is a company whose business model changes the game. fizwoz gives the citizen journalist the opportunity to make a profit from their cell phone or camera captured media by posting to a website where the agencies bid for the rights to use the material. When a user is fortunate enough to take a picture on their iPhone, Blackberry or Nokia that is of a newsworthy event, they can use the fizwoz state-of-the-art auction engine and cutting-edge mobile applications, enabling them to reach all levels of media buyers, from multinational media powerhouses to local newspapers. This allows the citizen journalist, the person who was in the right place at the right time, the chance to make a money from their own work, instead of allowing the big companies like Youtube and CNN take all the profit.
Check out fizwoz at CES
Are you coming to CES at the Las Vegas Convention Center this week? If you are, be sure to drop by the Nokia Main Booth (# 30313), in South Hall 3, which is on the Upper Level in the Wireless World area.
Our Founders, Andy Sheldon and Ian Smith will be there to tell you everything you need to know about fizwozTM.
This is the current booth schedule for fizwozTM :
Thursday 7th January : 1.45pm – 6.00pm
Friday 8th January : 8.30am – 1.30pm
Saturday 9th January : 1.15pm – 6.00pm
Sunday 10th January : 8.30am-12.30pm
See you there!
Iran Protests Revealed Through Cell Phone Captured Media
Photo via FreeeIran on Twitpic
Mobile phones have played a major role in the Tehran protest in the past year. This is “Because it is so difficult for mainstream journalists to report out of Iran, news agencies such as the BBC, ABC and The New York Times have made use of such videos and photos in their reporting, and CNN has been actively soliciting citizen reports from Iran via Twitter.” Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2009/12/29/2009-12-29_iranian_protesters_u.html#ixzz0bg2ywdTg
In the past, news agencies would have to hire photographers armed with traditional cameras in order to get valuable images for their news stories. In a situation like the protests in Iran, it is near impossible to get such a team in place. With the recent advances in camera phones over the past few years, protesters in places such as Iran or other areas in turmoil, have been given a new tool to show what is really happening on the front-line. Cell phones have allowed these citizen journalist to document events that would normally have been censored and share them with the world.
Today, most news agencies are able to get their content for free from sites such as Twitter, Youtube, and iReport. Here is an example of a cell phone video used in a CNN report. CNN :Iran protest crackdowns Dec 28 2009. This is great for the news agencies as they are able to use free content for their broadcast, but this model leaves the person who captured the content out of the profit equation. fizwoz is going to change that!
fizwoz is a new service that is radically changing the way citizen journalist share their content with the world. At fizwoz, our goal is to enable the citizen journalist to make a profit by selling relevant, time sensitive content to these large news agencies. fizwoz offers a free cell phone application that makes it easy for users to directly post their photos and videos to the fizwoz marketplace for their desired price. fizwoz then contacts all the appropriate news companies with the content to facilitate the sale.
