The Guardian has an article on a new photo agency service that wants to sell people’s “news photos” to the media…(via Buzzmachine)

Kyle Macrae, an IT journalist and technical author based in Glasgow, recently launched Scoopt, the first photo agency set up “specifically and exclusively for citizen journalists”. His aim is to recruit a large pool of amateur photographers armed with cameraphones and digital cameras. Members then hand their newsworthy images to Scoopt, which tries to sell them direct to newspapers and magazines, splitting the fee 50/50 with the photographer. The agency already has a couple of hundred members in nearly 30 countries.

Buzzmachine weighs in….

I wonder whether there’s a conflict between the inherently open and immediate world of citizens’ media and the closed, exclusive-addicted world of big media: Will citizen journalists decide not to share what they see so they can sell an exclusive to a paper or TV show? If they share their material online first, doesn’t that lower the value of what they’re selling to media, because it’s no longer exclusive.