Friday 7 September 2007

"Community" news

The Peterborough Examiner launches a new website tomorrow it says will include a community group feature that tops anything being done in Canadian media.

"It's your community site where you can upload your videos, your photos, your stories, your announcements, your blogs, your events, your schedules, your team's standings, your game results, your team photos and your community news," says an online Examiner story.

"It's your community web. You even get to moderate it. Readers can vote items off the community web; if enough voters don't like it, the item will be taken off by the system."

The Examiner, one of the many Osprey newspapers settling in as a Sun Media paper, says the community group site is free but requires registration.

The Examiner says "none of our competition has it: none of the local newsgroups, not The Globe and Mail, not The Toronto Star, no electronic media and not even our sister papers in the Sun Media chain have this community feature."

Community groups can register at http://urpeterborough.com/

TSF has only one question: Will text, photographs and videos provided free by community groups be used in Quebecor-owned newspapers and on television without compensation?

Is there fine print somewhere that guarantees the use of text, photos and videos submitted free of charge by citizen contributors will be restricted to the Examiner's community web site?

If not, citizen journalism at the Examiner or any other newspaper can be viewed as an additional threat to jobs in the newsroom.

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