DigitalJournal.com
Encyclopedia
Digital Journal started as a technology and gadget magazine in 1998 and evolved into a global citizen journalist news hub in 2006. DigitalJournal.com has seen significant growth since 2006 from word-of-mouth.
The site offers a different approach to citizen journalism
Citizen journalism
Citizen journalism is the concept of members of the public "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information," according to the seminal 2003 report We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information...
by being a content producer rather than link site such as Newsvine
Newsvine
Newsvine is a community-powered, collaborative journalism news website, owned by msnbc.com, which draws content from its users and syndicated content from mainstream sources such as The Associated Press...
or Digg
Digg
Digg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...
. The site is headquartered in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. The site is a full-fledged participatory news site like NowPublic
NowPublic
NowPublic is a user-generated social news website. The company is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and was founded by Michael Tippett, Leonard Brody and Michael E. Meyers in 2005. On Sept. 2, 2009 the company was acquired by Clarity Digital Group, LLC, wholly owned by The Anschutz...
or OhmyNews
OhmyNews
OhmyNews is a South Korean online newspaper website with the motto "Every Citizen is a Reporter". It was founded by Oh Yeon Ho on February 22, 2000....
.
DigitalJournal.com has two distinguishing factors from other citizen journalism initiatives: It shares advertising revenue with all Digital Journalists who report for the site and it has quality-control mechanisms in place to ensure content is accurate and well written, with the goal of creating trust from its readership. To contribute to DigitalJournal.com, citizen journalists must submit a sample of writing and demonstrate expertise to be approved first by Digital Journal's editorial board. The site is run like a newsroom, with an assignment desk where citizen journalists are given tips on news items that need to be covered. The site has broken news about many international stories including the 2008 Mumbai attacks
2008 Mumbai attacks
The 2008 Mumbai attacks were more than 10 coordinated shooting and bombing attacks across Mumbai, India's largest city, by Islamist attackers who came from Pakistan...
, and it also had a reporter in Gaza during the 2008-2009 Israel-Gaza conflict while the rest of the mainstream press was not allowed in the region.
In addition to digital journalists, DigitalJournal.com allows regular citizens to contribute, unpaid, by blogging, uploading images, embedding videos from sites like YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
, voting on content they deem newsworthy in a similar fashion to Digg
Digg
Digg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...
and interacting in groups.
The site is updated frequently, with approximately 100 articles per day. All DigitalJournal.com contributors are paid via PayPal at the end of the month based on a combination of how much they contribute, how much traffic their articles receive and how many votes they receive from readers. The site also offers bonus payments for on-the-ground reporting from breaking news events and interviews.
In January 2010, Digital Journal announced the formation of a Board of Advisers. The Board is made up of the following individuals :
- Journalist Jack Kapica, formerly of The Globe and MailThe Globe and MailThe Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed Canadian newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of approximately 1 million, it is Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star...
; - Andrew Waitman, Chief Executive Officer of Pythian Group Inc. and Managing Partner of Blackswan Ventures, an angel technology investment firm. Waitman has been involved with more than 75 start-ups.
- Kerry Munro, former head of Yahoo! Canada. Munro oversaw the company it became the fastest-growing and best-performing business unit in Yahoo!Yahoo!Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
Worldwide. - Michael GeistMichael GeistMichael Allen Geist is a Canadian academic, and the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. Geist was educated at the University of Western Ontario where he received his Bachelors of Laws before going on to get his Masters of Laws at both Osgoode Hall Law...
, a professor of law at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law. - Jennifer Evans, founder and chief strategist at Sequentia Environics, a customer communications agency.