Journalism
Contents
Emerging Journalism Models & Creative Commons
Old models of news delivery are changing, being complemented, and even supplanted by entirely new models. Many of these new models leverage Creative Commons licenses, a simple, standardized way for authors to grant copyright permissions to their work in the digital age. Because the rights to copy, distribute, or adapt content are pre-cleared, news is more rapidly and widely disseminated, allowing innovative business models to emerge that rely on free and legal sharing and reuse.
Two examples of non-profit journalism ventures funded by foundations and/or other sponsors are Propublica and the Huffington Post Investigative Fund.
Propublica
Led by Paul Steiger, the former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, Propublica is an independent 32-person newsroom producing investigative journalism. Propublica encourages others to "steal"[1] its stories; it encourages other sites to reproduce their stories as long as they are credited and linked to under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license (CC BY-NC-ND). Propublica also gives certain stories first to major news outlets, such as the New York Times and CNN, in order to maximize their impact. After a window of exclusivity, which can be anywhere from seconds to hours after the original publication depending on the agreement, these stories are also published on the Propublica site under CC BY-NC-ND.
Groundreport
Groundreport covers global news. It has over 5,000 contributors, citizen journalists from all around the world with various levels of experience, who submit articles, photos, and videos of news events, which are vetted by a staff of editors. Groundreport publishes stories on its site and through syndication partners such as Google News, the Huffington Post, and YouTube; and shares 50% of its advertising revenue with its contributors, based on unique traffic to posts. Reporters retain rights to their work and can choose which Creative Commons license to publish under.
Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera is the first major news source to use Creative Commons. Al Jazeera built a Creative Commons video repository consisting of broadcast-quality video of the war in Gaza and made it available to anyone for use under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY). Because Al Jazeera had access to the region amidst scarcity of news footage available, the CC BY license enabled other news organizations report on the footage while crediting Al Jazeera—increasing both coverage of the war and Al Jazeera as the original news source. The International Herald Tribune states, “In a conflict where the Western news media have been largely prevented from reporting from Gaza because of restrictions imposed by the Israeli military, Al Jazeera has had a distinct advantage. It was already there.”
Others uses of CC in journalism
- code open source journalism projects: http://www.poynter.org/news/media-innovation/389914/24-pull-requests-the-journalism-edition/
- Boing Boing (CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0 USA)
- Global Voices (CC-BY 3.0)
- Pragati - The Indian National Interest Review (CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0)
- F News Magazine (CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0)
- Category 5 (CC-BY Canada 2.5)
- The New Inquiry (CC-BY-NC-SA)
- WikiNews (CC-BY 2.5)
- Chicago Stories (CC-BY-NC 3.0)
- Democracy Now! (CC-BY-NC-ND United States 3.0)
- Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)
- The Conversation (CC-BY-ND 4.0)
- Torrent Freak (CC-BY-NC 3.0)
- Agência Brasil (CC-BY Brazil 3.0)
- Alternatives International (CC-BY-NC-ND 2.5)
- Agência Livre Alternativa de Notícias (CC-BY-SA)
- RioOnWatch (CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0)
- Agência Pública (CC-BY-ND 4.0)
- vozeRio (CC-BY-ND 4.0)
- Nintendo Blast (CC-BY-SA 3.0 BR)
Media observatories
- Observatório da Imprensa (CC-BY-NC-SA)
- FAIR (CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0)
