BBC will pay you for photos
MediaGuardian, the media-focused portion of the Guardian newspaper, has a story (sorry, registration required) that says the BBC will pay you if you submit a particularly good photo or video from your camera phone or video-cam. The story notes that the official guidelines, which are here, say specifically that “We only pay in exceptional circumstances for such footage,” and that
Audiences should not be encouraged to think that payment is the norm, or in any way encouraged to take risks, put themselves in danger or break any laws in order to secure what they perceive to be material of high monetary value
The MediaGuardian story points out that just three weeks ago at a conference in Istanbul, the head of BBC’s interactive arm said that the Beeb wouldn’t pay for user-generated content. “Not on the budget I’ve got,” he said. “We don’t expect to pay for it and I don’t recall anyone asking for that. They retain the copyright and if they want to try and sell it elsewhere, they can.” Steve Rubel of Micropersuasion has some thoughts.
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(On Nov 17th, 2006 at 8:12 am)
If they were smart they’d set up a pool on Flickr for submissions and let the community filter out the great ones.
(On Nov 17th, 2006 at 10:27 am)
This story in the Guardian is misleading. We’ve never said we will absolutely never pay for pictures, just that such payments will be exceptional.
And we are already experimenting with using flickr as a way of gathering and filtering photos. For example:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/radio1bigweekend/
(I work for the BBC)
(On Nov 17th, 2006 at 12:28 pm)
[…] — My media blog: Current featured post is “BBC will pay you for photos” […]
(On Nov 17th, 2006 at 7:00 pm)
Thanks for the comment, Nick. But didn’t the Guardian story say exactly that? Or do you mean the previous story that quoted Pete Clifton as saying the BBC wouldn’t pay? In any case, I appreciate you stopping by — and the Flickr idea is indeed a good one.
(On Nov 17th, 2006 at 12:23 pm)
[…] The issue of payment continues to be one of the major sticking points in these efforts, which Seth Finkelstein likes to call “digital sharecropping.” The BBC has said that it will pay those who submit photos or videos, but only if they are significant in some way — and what would qualify as significant remains to be defined (would video of Michael Richards having a racist meltdown qualify?). Reuters plans to pay if photos are distributed to media outlets, but not if they just appear on Yahoo: Users will not be paid for images displayed on the Yahoo and Reuters sites. But people whose photos or videos are selected for distribution to Reuters clients will receive a payment. Mr. Ahearn said the company had not yet figured out how to structure those payments. […]
(On Nov 17th, 2006 at 3:32 pm)
[…] The issue of payment continues to be one of the major sticking points in these efforts, which Seth Finkelstein likes to call “digital sharecropping.” The BBC has said that it will pay those who submit photos or videos, but only if they are significant in some way — and what would qualify as significant remains to be defined (would video of Michael Richards having a racist meltdown qualify?). Reuters plans to pay if photos are distributed to media outlets, but not if they just appear on Yahoo: Users will not be paid for images displayed on the Yahoo and Reuters sites. But people whose photos or videos are selected for distribution to Reuters clients will receive a payment. Mr. Ahearn said the company had not yet figured out how to structure those payments. […]