A TV news producer I met at a local political event this weekend said, “We love citizen journalists. Here’s my email address. If you get any good material, let me know.” I asked how much they paid. “We give you credit,” he said. “Your work can be seen by millions of people.” But if they use my work, they won’t credit me professionally, as InternetVideoPromotion.com. “That would be against my contract,” the man said. So, basically, this TV news producer was saying he’s happy to have my work and to use it, but that he won’t pay a dime for it, nor will he give a contributor any useful on-air credit. And even the most prolific, most helpful outsider in the world will never earn any money by contributing video to this station: “We don’t pay freelancers,” the producer told me flat-out.

These are not perfect quotes (I wasn’t taking notes), but they’re near-verbatim paraphrases. The bottom line seems to be that this for-profit Tampa-area TV station, owned by a national media conglomerate, “loves citizen journalists” as a source of free video, but doesn’t love them enough to pay a dime for their material.

So tell me: why would I want to send these people any of my better work? Why wouldn’t I just post it here, on my own website? I haven’t had any ads on Roblimo.com for quite a while, but I have a moribund Google adsense account and I’m thinking about reactivating it. A tech-journalist friend claims he’s now earning $100 or more in Google ad revenue for every story he posts on his personal site. He may be exaggerating, but even if I only earn $25 or $10 or $5 or $1 for each video I post on Roblimo.com (or on video-sharing sites that split revenue with contributors), that’s still better than I will get from at least one local TV station.

And even if I post my videos on YouTube, which also doesn’t pay, they provide links to Roblimo.com and, at my option, to InternetVideoPromotion.com, so at least I get some promo oomph in return for my contribution.

There is a serious disconnect between commercial broadcasters and the idea of “citizen journalism.” The local TV news operation whose producer is eager to have my work — as long as he can get it for free — is not alone in his attitude. CNN’s iReport is no better. They live in a closed world where their own people get paid — often quite well — but anyone else whose work they use is supposed to be grateful if the Media Barons give them a little “exposure.”

And you wonder why the traditional media are dying. Oy!

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 22nd, 2008 at 9:10 pm and is filed under Bradenton/local, Business, Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.