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HAMBURG - When a lovesick German got marooned in Montana after typing the wrong destination in his internet plane booking, he sold his story to a popular paper and - as Germany's "biggest fool" - earned cash to try again.
Tobias Gutt, 21, flew halfway around the world
in the wrong direction towards the small US town of Sidney - instead of towards his heart's desire in Sydney, Australia - before realising his blunder.
Dim-witted in booking, Gutt was smart enough to know he had a story to tell, and offered his "Oh-what-a-fool-am-I!" tale to Germany's Bild newspaper, the daily that has embraced "citizen journalists" in the last eight months.
Bild splashed his story of stupidity over half a page.
"It worked out well for everyone," Bild editor-in-chief Kai Diekmann told Reuters. "I couldn't imagine getting by any more without our citizen journalists. They bring stories and pictures that we wouldn't be able to get ourselves."
Bild was not the first in Germany to rely on user-generated content (UGC), but it has most enthusiastically broken through a stuffy reluctance among newspapers in Germany since it started publishing unusual pictures and stories supplied by readers.
A picture of French soccer star Zinedine Zidane having a lonely cigarette on his hotel balcony, a German pop celebrity caught kissing a woman who was not his wife, and a German soccer player urinating in a carpark have been among the reader shots.
"We're constantly amazed by the creativity and quality of reader reporters," said Diekmann.
"We look at the pictures that come in and say 'No way, that can't be true!'," he said, flashing a wide smile.
Diekmann said a growing team of 10 staffers works full time to check the veracity of users' material and ensure photos have not been manipulated.
"Nothing gets into the paper until we're certain that it's true," he said. "Once in a while someone tries to slip a hoax past us, but it's the great exception and we always catch it."
Bild receives 400 to 4000 reader pictures each day and pays up to €500 ($948) for the handful it uses. In 2006, it published a total of 1500 reader photos and paid out €330,000 in fees. Some were so important that other media outlets bought them. Bild shared the profits with photographers.
Its use of citizen journalists has drawn criticism in Germany, where memories of the Gestapo secret police or East Germany's Stasi make many wary of any type of surveillance.
Michael Konken, head of the German Society of Professional Journalists, said citizen journalists were devaluing the work of professionals and lowering standards.
"But it doesn't matter who wrote the story or took the picture," said Diekmann. "What's decisive is the quality of the story or picture. I just don't see how UGC devalues journalism.
"It's the arrogance of people who don't want to make room for developments," he added, noting that film of John F. Kennedy being assassinated was taken by an amateur.
Some critics have also worried the mainstream use of citizen journalists could foster peeping Toms, snoopers or Orwellian Big Brothers. Germany's Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries said she feared the enthusiasm for users' shots encouraged paparazzi.
"There were attempts at first to push us into a certain tawdry corner," said Diekmann.
Citizen journalists usually have the right instincts, he said. Bild is proud of one reader who pulled a driver out of a truck crash before taking pictures when it caught fire.
"Citizen journalists generally respect standards of good taste. We never get pictures taken through bedroom windows. People have a healthy sense of the boundaries. About 99 per cent of the photos that could cause problems are from professionals."
Diekmann, who has run the tabloid-style daily with about 12 million readers since 2001, said user-generated content is a boon.
"The quality of the reporting has also improved. We get more authentic information. When someone is at the scene they've got an unbeatable advantage over a journalist who has to first overcome time and distance."
The crash of a Concorde jet in Paris in 2000, the tsunami in Asia, Hurricane Katrina and London's 2005 bombings are among earlier news stories where mainstream news media have relied on user-generated content.
"The user-generated content phenomenon is the inevitable end product of a long development in technology," said Diekmann. "With the cellphone cameras that almost everyone has, you get pictures that obliterate the old problems of time and distance."
As a prominent German newspaper editor, he himself is sometimes ambushed by readers with cameras as he leaves home or a family outing.
"I have to live with that," he said. However, none of the pictures submitted yet was exciting enough to be published.
Citizen Journalism
"Citizen journalism" is one of the hottest concepts in the news business these days. Many newspaper executives are probably thinking about implementing some sort of citizen-journalism initiative; a small but growing number, including the Herald, have already done so.
A report by Steve Outing for the Poynter Institute says the steps towards citizen (or participatory) journalism include: Opening up to public comment (including blogs), open-source reporting (a collaboration between a professional journalist and readers on a story), the citizen bloghouse (a great way to get citizens involved in a news website), and standalone citizen-journalism sites (separate from the core news brand, generally focusing on very local news, edited or unedited).
Then there is wiki journalism where the readers are editors: anyone can edit any story that has been posted.
"The jury is still out on whether WikiNews will work, but the wiki model does seem to succeed with Wikipedia," Outing writes.
"The online encyclopaedia is now one of the top information sources on the web, and its entries are, for the most part, accurate and useful. WikiNews, so far, is a less compelling service."
Traditional news organisations are unlikely to copy WikiNews, but the wiki concept might be useful to them in certain situations. "For example, an obituary might work as a wiki. A family member might write the initial article, then friends and family add remembrances, photos, etc.
"The big worry that editors have about wiki is that people will use it inappropriately and, while that's certainly possible, the experience at Wikipedia indicate that that's unlikely."
- REUTERS
