Case Studies/Pacific Scoop
Unique, independent and necessary in NZ media... — Pacific Scoop website
Overview
Pacific Scoop was established in 1999, the result of a joint venture between AUT University’s Pacific Media Centre and the independent news portal Scoop. It is the leading news resource in New Zealand for people behind the news, rather than just readers/viewers. Pacific Scoop aims to address the lack of coverage of Pacific news stories in the mainstream media by reporting on Pacific news, current affairs and analysis. The aim is to provide an independent voice of the Pacific which will tell the hidden stories and highlight under-exposed issues.
Pacific Scoop prides itself on delivering news when it happens, unprocessed and independent, so readers can get the whole story and form their own opinions. Scoop’s mission is “To be an agent of positive change”. It seeks to provide an open forum for the expression of a variety of perspectives without ‘spin’ or prejudice from either the reporters or a multinational media conglomerate.
The website will be updated with stories by postgraduate Pacific student journalists and other media students. Academic staff, regional journalists and civil society advocates and analysts will also contribute to articles posted on the website.
The website is updated daily with more than 100 Topic Indexes, including “education, culture, creativity, environment, health, human rights, media, social justice, resource development, regional security and technology”. Specific issues which will be highlighted include those of censorship and democracy in Fiji and Tonga.
Pacific scoop has already received a number of awards including a 2005 Democratic Media Award and ranked 3rd by Nielsen Net//Ratings in their News Category. It was also a finalist in the Qantas Media Awards Best News Site in 2007 as well as Netguide Magazine’s Web Awards in 2004.
License Usage
Pacific Scoop has chosen an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives New Zealand licence to release its content under. This means that readers can use the content on the website as long as they attribute the work, only use it for non-commercial purposes and not alter, transform or build upon the work.
Just as is the case for the Pacific Media Centre website, the licence is applied through the use of a licence button on every page of the site linking to a summary of the licence, which in turn links to the full licence.
The website averages more then 450,000 reported readers per month and is clearly a leading news resource in New Zealand so the use of a Creative Commons licence will allow readers to more easily use the material available.
Motivations
Pacific Scoop believes “…in the power of compelling ideas to propel themselves into political consciousness if they are able to get exposure and be debated”. The use of a Creative Commons licence has enabled readers of Scoop to more easily use the information they find on the website. This means that the material on the site will receive greater exposure and helps them to achieve their aim of encouraging people to get their news from an independent, informative source.
Pacific Scoop’s mission embodies the ideas of “freedom, expression, ideas, information, empowerment, transformation”. Releasing their material under a CC licence will serve to help the free expression of ideas and information in an open forum and encourage people to take a more active role in digesting news.
