Occasional Scribbles

Has anyone heard of a news site called Now Public (www.nowpublic.com)?  It seems to be an online news paper where the news is written by anyone.  So you or I could send in a story about some breaking news and it will be on the site.  For example, the recent Gustav storm is on there together with video captured by someone who was in the vicinity.  Stories can be catagorised as unfinished or needing more information and other people can add to the story or comment on it. It seems quite a good idea in that anyone, anywhere may well be in the right place at the right time, ready to report on something as opposed to journalists. 

It came to my attention today, when an email popped up from someone called Jason who wanted permission to use a rather fetching photo I had taken of one of my chickens.  Jason had found the photo on Flickr and wanted to use it as an illustration for his article about the Scandinavian idea of using chicken waste (muck) to make electricity in the ‘strange’ section of the paper.  Feeling rather flattered that anyone wanted to use my photo, I followed the link to approve its use and sure enough it appeared next to the story.

The only thing is, through giving permission to use the photo, I now seemed to have signed up to Now Public!  I now have a space there where people can get in touch with me, look at other photos I put up, get a feed from my stuff on there.  Problem is, I don’t write news stories!!  I suppose it may have been a deliberate ploy to get me to sign up.  It seemed I couldn’t just give permission for the use of the photo without ‘registering’.  Oh well, I expect I will disappear from the site soon enough, once it is realised that my one and only contribution is a photo of a handsome cockerel!  It did look rather nice alongside the article though.  Here’s a link if you want to check it out.  http://members.nowpublic.com/np-l-1060470 should take you straight to the relevant page.