Kyle
Rawporter made a pretty nice impact at South By Southwest in Austin Texas earlier this month. This two person start up out of Charlotte NC is bringing a new concept to citizen reporting. With Rawporter, not only can a citizen report the news via video, they can also get paid for it.
Rawporter came about when friends and co-founders Kevin Davis and Rob Gaige were hanging out and then saw a horrible accident. Of course everyone on the scene of the accident had their camera phone out and were shooting the entire scene, but when they got home and turned on the 11:00 news, Gaige tells me that the only shot they had was the reporters stand up at a cleared scene.
Gaige and Davis knew that there had to be someway for those people who too that video, and the hundreds of thousands of people who take videos of incidents like this everyday, could both get sourced and make money.
Gaige has a background in marketing. Davis has a background in news radio, and then changed careers to marketing. They both met in the marketing department at Bank of America. As they see first hand that the biggest companies in the world are cutting back staff, and Davis knows that news media jobs are eliminated every day, citizen reporting can easily become a huge source for news stations.
More after the break
The Rawporter system is pretty easy. You set up a Rawporter account and then download the app. It’s currently only available for iOS however it is in closed beta for Android. When you’re in the midst of news or anything you think is newsworthy you can post videos via the Rawporter app. No need for narration or editing, hence the name Rawporter. From there news outlets and videographers can buy the footage that you post.
It also works in reverse. News directors, videographers, and editors can commission assignments, say for things like south by southwest. A News Director could say “I need three minutes of pedicabs in Austin Texas”. You can respond to the assignment, go shoot it, post it and it’s done.
Other citizen journalism apps have already tested the waters, like meporter. Apps like that can be fun, but they make it more of a game than actual news, and there is no money making component.
There’s also YouTube of course but news directors have shyed away from Youtube primarily because it’s hard to validate the video footage and also clear the rights to it.
Gaige, Davis and their IT partner Michael Robinson have carefully taken all of these factors into consideration as they’ve rolled out their new news platform.
