New Citizen Media Projects Make a Splash

Posted on October 2, 2006
Filed Under Channels and Content, European Web 2.0, People's Web 2.0 |

AGORAVOX - The Citizen Media

/Olivier Niquet last week explained that the Canadian citizen media paper which he helped found, Cien Papiers, is inspired by Agoravox so this morning I went across and took a look.

Agoravox (literally I suppose it means voice market or opinion bazaar) is available in French and English. Its founders are French and their belief is every citizen could be the source of one unpublished story. Agoravox is supposed to be the platform for those stories to be told.

In reality the paper tells regular mainstream stories but often told from a new perspective - at least a perspective that’s new to some of us. Today, for example, the Bush-Iraq story is told by Nicola, an Arab journalist based in Ramallah.

It’s not clear if the stories get to Agoravox via a citizen referring them or whether they are submitted direct by the author. Most authors look to me to have some outlet already on other media platforms.

Those reservations aside Agoravox is a place to go for a different perspective. And it joins a growing number of projects, Netzeitung being the most profitable and an exemplar for how to do it commercially, that are looking to put diverse views ahead of established.


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Comments

One Response to “New Citizen Media Projects Make a Splash”

  1. Guillaume Champeau on October 2nd, 2006 8:18 am

    Hi,

    I am in charge of Agoravox UK. Thank you for this post, and I’m glad Olivier had Agoravox as a model for his quebecois paper. Such initiatives should flourish in the next months.

    On the point that seemed unclear to you. Actually we have two ways of having stories on Agoravox. First, we contact authors and have their autorize to publish stories that they have already published on their own blog or publication (we monitor them daily thanks to RSS syndication). Otherwise, we have authors registered on Agoravox, who actively submit stories on the platform.
    Today, the English version of Agoravox works mostly thanks to the former, and Agoravox France works nearly 100 % thanks to the latter.

    Anyway, we would be very happy to count Megiangler amongst Agoravox members.

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