Now Public, Citizen Journalism Venture, Strives For The Top

When you hear the term citizen journalism, does it ring any bells? It should. It’s been floated about quite a bit over the years. It refers to a sort of “massively multiplayer” method of producing news stories and features, produced “by the people, for the people.”

Many news organizations from around the world latched onto the concept in various ways as Web 2.0-type tools started to look ever more appealing to those esteemed institutions. Yahoo! even made its own attempts to work the citizen journalism angle to establish a strictly publicly produced news channel. And now an individual by the name of Leonard Brody, founder and CEO of Now Public, is looking to take his website, built on the work of citizen journalists, to the fore of the media world.

Will the man’s plan pan out? That depends on how big Brody wishes to get with Now Public. According to a report on the company’s development in Red Herring, they’re looking to build “the next generation Reuters.” A mighty grand ambition, no doubt.

It should be noted that Now Public isn’t a particularly fresh or budding invention. The company was put together roughly 2 years ago, has offices in New York and Vancouver, and claims to see 600 stories published with the collective efforts of 130,000 contributors, scattered throughout the globe in 140 countries. It is currently operating with a help of a $13 million funding infusion made in July by Rho Ventures, among other institutions.

Keep in mind that Now Public states that few of its journalistic participants are paid.

Now, citizen journalism really only works if 1) a significant mass is involved in the process, paid or unpaid for the work (a la Wikipedia), or 2) if the group responsible for producing the news on a regular basis – in Now Public’s case, daily – is compensated. Presumably through an ad-revenue sharing arrangement. In the short run – one year to a half-decade’s time, say – citizen journalists, knowing that their work is being consumed by others, are more or less content with doing things as long as they’re popularly accepted. At present, citizen journalism is accepted by those who perform the task.

They understand thousands of others are doing the same, and the collective effort is creating something rather remarkable, and thus the product, or the effect of their “cause” is a reward in and of itself.

But when talking of long-term sustainability, it’s hard to imagine that a company can manage to maintain the critical mass of project contributors to keep things going relatively smoothly, particularly a profit-seeking one like Now Public.
Therefore, it’s worth asking: Is Now Public working a viable business model, or is it bound to hit a snag?

I say, if it doesn’t address the issue of revenue sharing, and do so fairly soon, and it’s base of contributors finds that it’s not getting a fair shake, the whole thing won’t last very long at all.