New photo journalism website

As a new photo journalism website gets under way, FPME talks to their CEO, Turi Munthe.

28/12/2008 - 20:56

Demotix, a relatively new web based resource for journalists and photographers, describes itself as ' The Street Wire', where 'street' journalist can upload news stories to share on the Demotix website and allow Demotix to market them to the mainstream media.

 

"Gathering content from ‘citizen journalists’, it provides the mainstream media with photographs and videos from around the world, aiming to provide a safe and secure channel for everyone from Cuba to Kashmir, Bolivia to Borneo to upload their local news stories.An issues-based new media tool – it perhaps most easily described as Youtube and Flickr meets Reuters, with a social conscience.  
 
In some respects, it's more like Flickr, because it's creating a community and people upload for free. Demotix then on-sell the photos at professional rates and split the fees 50:50. That may seem steep to a professional photographer, but for someone getting their work out there, at least it's something. After begin published through Demotix, the website organisers are quite happy if the individual photographer negotiates their own relationships and rates for their next set of images.
 

Contracts have been set up with a number of international outlets such as the UK's Daily Telegraph, Italy's La Repubblica, and France's Le Monde."

 

From their press office:

 

A business case for Demotix?

Most newspapers, broadcast outlets and wires are cutting back on their foreign news bureaus and reducing their own international coverage. There only 4 US newspapers with a foreign desk and even AP and Reuters fail to cover 40%  of the world with more than a single staffer.

 

Demotix was set up to serve as an antidote to cutbacks and supplement the mainstream press to offer distinctive take on news. It can provide journalists with an new avenue for sourcing international news, particularly from parts of the world where freedom of speech issues restrict the availability of objective reports.

 

The market opportunity is not small.  The newswire market is around $2 billion dollars, and the editorial photostock market is estimated at $500 million and growing at around 10% per annum over the next 3 years. 

 

The partnership behind Demotix

CEO, Turi Munthe and COO, Jonathan Tepper met at university and pursued separate careers.

 

Turi is a commenter and writer on Middle Eastern issues, working for international outlets (CNN, BBC, Sky, Economist, Financial Times) and Middle Eastern outlets (Asahi, Press TV, Al-Jazeera, al-Arabiya, al-Hayat, anNahar) and Jonathan in finance for Lehman Brother, Bank of America etc. The two rejoined 12-18months ago to fill a crucial gap in the market – a service at the crossroads of activism and journalism.

 

They currently work with 18 staff to provide the service to their media partners and promote the service in the Western and developing world. In October Turi took a tour throughout the Middle East and plans to do the same in South America in December.

 

Coming out of Beta,

Demotix has been running in a beta form for some while and has already had some success says Turi, and, early in the New Year we will be launching the newly designed site (There will be a news story about this on FPME as soon as it happens). While some contibutors have pointed out a few concerns with the site, we have already addressed most of these with the new version and we will continue with development as time goes on.

 

We asked Turi about the stripping of information off all images that the site does. "While we appreciated that some contributors would prefer to keep their copyright information intact, we have a number of contributions from reporters whose identity being revealed might put them in danger. At the time we had to make a choice, and chose to strip all information out of the images. With the new site we will endeavour to give  contributors the option as soon as is practically possible. In the meantime we will continue to strip the information".

 

We also asked about the scope for 'local' news stories. Turi said "We would like to educate all photographers to be able to see the stories in the images they shoot and to increase their awareness of of the journalistic opportunities available in their images. It may just be an images of a neighbour with a disability doing something different but it has a human angle and is the type of story that is nowadays getting missed by the decreasing number of employed photojournalists."

 

You can find the Demotix site here