Citizen journalism website Demotix has claimed a world exclusive with a photograph of the arrest of professor Henry Louis Gates - the high profile black Harvard scholar.
The image was licensed by almost all the major US networks and news programmes, including CBS, ABC, NBC News and CNN.
In print, it was published by the Washington Post, the Boston Globe and the Herald, New York Daily News and the New York Post. The image also made the front page of the Guardian in the UK.
Demotix commissioning editor Andy Heath said of the exclusive picture: "Without citizen-journalism, it would not exist. A member of the public, witnessing a story unfolding, reached for his digital camera and captured the story.
"This is different to the Twitpic of the plane on the Hudson River – then, the world's media was just a few minutes behind. During Mr Gates' arrest, no professional photographer was present. This was a true exclusive, by a true citizen-journalist."
Good on the person who took the pic, and good on Demotix for publishing it. Obviously.
ReplyDeleteQuick question though: what quality does this photo possess that all the other exclusive photos that people we used to call eye-witnesses have taken of events and incidents down the years and dropped in, posted or (more recently) emailed to the newsdesk? The best of which will also have been syndicated.