Updated: Here’s the scoopt

Scoopt, the citizen shooter photo agency, is reaching out. The UK-based company, in an open letter to Flickr users, is inviting them to sign up for Scoopt and potentially sell their work.

(Scoopt works on behalf of its members to sell photos and videos, splitting the proceeds 50/50.)

It seems like a smart move. If the offer is widely taken up, Scoopt builds its library (without having to store stuff on its servers) and potential sales, and photographers have at least the possibility of making a few bucks.

UPDATE: Interestingly enough, there’s a NY Times article from today about efforts by Yahoo and Reuters to use more citizen photojournalism and video. The plan:

Starting tomorrow, the photos and videos submitted will be placed throughout Reuters.com and Yahoo News, the most popular news Web site in the United States, according to comScore MediaMetrix. Reuters said that it would also start to distribute some of the submissions next year to the thousands of print, online and broadcast media outlets that subscribe to its news service. Reuters said it hoped to develop a service devoted entirely to user-submitted photographs and video.

So far, Yahoo and Reuters are looking at this as citizen journalism contributions, although that will partially change.

Users will not be paid for images displayed on the Yahoo and Reuters sites. But people whose photos or videos are selected for distribution to Reuters clients will receive a payment. Mr. Ahearn said the company had not yet figured out how to structure those payments. The basic payment may be relatively small, but he said Reuters was likely to pay more to people offering exclusive rights to images of major events.

Personally, if there’s a chance my images will be used by media (mainstream or new) I’d rather go with a service such as Scoopt, with its possibility of payment.

SOURCE FOR YAHOO-REUTERS ARTICLE: CHIP SCANLON | TAGS: PHOTOGRAPHY, JOURNALISM, SCOOPT