ChimpReports has started an amazing ‘citizen journalism’ project that will see news contributors being rewarded with internet data.
Citizen Journalism is an act in which citizens play an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information with the intention of providing independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information to the public.
“If ChimpReports publishes any of your video stories, ChimpReports will send you 1GB of internet data straight to your mobile phone,” said Giles Muhame – ChimpReports’ Executive Editor.
“All you need is your smartphone to capture news stories around you in video format and send the videos (less than 2 minutes each) via WhatsApp number +256 752 187021 or send an email to info@chimpreports.com,” he added.
How to obtain a great 2-minute video shot
Use your smartphone to record an incident close to you; then zoom or get closer to the main subject to get a close-up of his/her face. Show two eyes, not a profile shot. The shot must focus on WHO’s doing it.
Then move back from the action and capture a medium shot of the subject to show the scene of the incident and complete the video shooting with an “over-the-shoulder” shot (standing just behind the subject).
“Please attach a description of the video in only four paragraphs (text) explaining what happened, where it happened, when it happened, how it happened and who was involved,” said ChimpReports’ Citizen Journalism Project coordinator, Patience Natukunda.
“The editors at ChimpReports in Kampala will look through your content before publication,” said Natukunda
Focus areas
Citizen Journalists will focus on reporting crime in their local area (murder, sexual violence, robbery, rape etc), environmental degradation, politics, business, sports, agriculture, trade, success stories etc.
You can also report any form of wrongdoing at your workplace (corruption, abuse of office, tax evasion, harassment, flouting procurement rules, violence etc).
If you can’t obtain a video recording of a crime or strange happening at your workplace or community, please take photographs of key documents or suspected wrongdoers. For such sensitive stories, your identity will be kept as top secret.
For inspirational content, you can send us a video of how you are making ends meet during covid-19 lockdown (baking, metal fabrication, service delivery etc). You can as well send us videos of innovations (ICT, trade, protecting environment, health etc).
ChimpLyf Reloaded
Meanwhile, ChimpReports also is reviving ChimpLyf Section to cover your ‘Life Stories.’
For this platform, you can share video confessions (3 minutes each) of your interesting life stories (marriage, academic achievements, sports excellence, growing up in difficult times, surviving road accidents, weight loss, surviving as an orphan, succeeding as a single mother/dad, dealing with stigma, overcoming drug/alcohol addiction etc).
Why are we doing this?
The resurgence of COVID-19 is reshaping the world’s media landscape.
For example, Uganda is currently in a lockdown with inter district travel suspended. This means restricted movement of journalists across Uganda. Even without a lockdown, it is almost impossible for journalists to fully cover issues in all our communities across the entire country.
However, citizen journalists’ use of alternative media platforms plays an important role in providing information to citizens especially those located in marginalised communities with limited access to mainstream media.
People living in rural and peri-urban communities, particularly women and youths in these areas are likely to benefit more from the work of citizen journalists that facilitate citizen information sharing and informed debates on online platforms such as ChimpReports.
ChimpReports, which is soon celebrating its 10th birthday, found it important to fill this existing information gap with the Citizen Journalism.
Additionally, it has been proven that people with little professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the internet to create media content.
The viral 9/11 bombing photos were captured by Citizen Journalists before mainstream media accessed the scene. The Makerere University Main Building fire was first reported live on YouTube by a Citizen Journalist.
Both citizen journalism and professional journalism have telling the truth, promoting democracy, spreading information and promoting transparency and accountability as their driving forces. They must be objective, truthful and fair.
ChimpReports also presents a slightly edited manual, first produced by International Media Support (IMS), to offer useful tips to citizen journalists on how to write great stories, capturing the essence of a story, facts, and voices and transmitting that information.
The manual also focuses on how to gather, share, upload, livestream various pieces of information ranging from text, audio, videos and photos.
This guide will also be handy for citizen journalists interested in live-streaming and mobile reporting.
The Citizen Journalism project is entirely funded by Chimp Media.
The post ChimpReports Offers ‘1 GB Data Per Video Story’ to Citizen Journalists first appeared on ChimpReports.