Over the last 20 years, the news cycle has reached warp speed. Social media has created an almost real-time news feed with citizens and journalists reporting events literally moments after they happen. During the Boston Marathon bombing and subsequent manhunt, Twitter was heavily utilized as a reporting tool.
When a US Airways flight crashed into the Hudson river, it too was first reported on Twitter.
But real-time, often crowdsourced, journalism has several dangers associated with it. First, the authenticity of the event; did it actually happen? We’ve all seen deaths being reported on social media, only to discover later that they were either mistakes or pranks. Second, did the event actually happen as it’s being reported? For example, I could upload a real photo of a car on fire and say it was a terrorist bomb, when in reality, I just set the car on fire.
Newslinn is working to create a platform where citizens can share photos directly with journalists, and journalists can have confidence that those photos are both accurate representations of real events.
The platform has several facets to it. First, journalists create an account on Newslinn. When a citizen uploads a photo to Newslinn, either through the smartphone app (coming in a few weeks) or through the desktop website, it is available to view by all registered journalists.
A test photo I uploaded on the Newslinn site
A journalist in Chicago, for example, could go on to the Newslinn site and search for all photos that had been uploaded in the Chicago area. Or, if a citizen elects to share a photo with all journalists in a specific area, the journalists will receive that photo directly in their Newslinn inbox.
The journalist dashboard
In order to ensure that the photo is an authentic one of actual events, the Newslinn platform uses artificial intelligence to perform a number of verification steps behind the scenes. Currently, the rules engine, which is being constantly updated, uses over 60 different rules to validate the legitimacy of a photo.
These rules include verification that:
- the photo is an original, exclusive image and not one already posted on social media or Google.
- the geolocation data on the photo matches the information supplied.
- the photo has not been edited in any way.
- the camera footprint of the photo matches the smartphone that actually uploaded the photo.
Newslinn also pulls additional data from the photos that journalists can use manually to verify photos. Co-founder Shane Devane told me:
Newslinn uses photo metadata to collect the weather forecast, wind speed, cloud cover, temperature and humidity at the time the photo was taken. Aiding journalists to verify the photo further and also to check for abnormalities, i.e., wind direction of smoke within a photo and/or people wearing inconsistent clothing compared to others.
Additionally…
Newslinn also extracts object data from within the photo to further understand what is in the photo (e.g., trees, tanks, people, protest) and uses that data to provide journalists with useful internet resources to help in further photo investigation, e.g., when army insignia is identified, links to military symbols and identification resources are shown (https://www.army.mil/symbols/), along with quick links to Google News and other resources. Especially useful for photos not being shared in real-time.
The goal is to provide as many verification checks as possible for journalists. Devane provided me with the following screenshots to help illustrate the detail into which the system analysis goes:
Newslinn is not a place for citizens to sell photos to journalists. Rather, it’s a platform that promotes sharing photos and spreading stories quickly and easily. For people who want to get the word out about a story (a protest, for example), Newslinn is aiming to be their go-to platform.
This seems to be the way that journalism is headed. The news cycle moves incredibly fast and journalists must stay abreast of what is happening. While it’s hard to know whether this particular platform will succeed, it is clear that crowdsourcing photos and information to help break a story is very much in the cards for journalism. Realistically, the hand has already been dealt.
Stephen Altrogge is a freelance writer based in Tallahassee, Florida. He writes about tech, marketing, faith, and lots of other things. He’s married to Jen and has three young girls. Every day he consumes more coffee than the entire population of Colombia. He knows more about Star Wars than any respectable man should, and he runs more than any sane man would. He once attempted to eat a 2 pound hamburger in under an hour. He failed.
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Hmm, I get it. I think it will help news travel at the speed of light that it is today.
great piece Stephen. Our focus right now is to get the smartphone app out the door and then continue to build out and fine tune the platform. I’ll be around if anyone has question, please post in the comments there.
This just made a journalists job even easier. Pretty slick system, if it works at warp speed anyways. What would keep a journalist from just grabbing an image from Twitter, putting credit where credit is due and going from there?
Hey Patrick, You can embed a tweet/photo of someone’s on your site which is cool, and thereby ‘use’ the photo in the tweet. But ultimately you are not allowed to download a photo and use it, regardless of if you attribute the photo or not. ie. first you need to contact them and ask permission. But there are more steps involved, as you need to trust the Twitter account, get in touch with them (to ask permission) and then make sure they were the first ones posting that image on twitter ie. did they really take the photo? and also own the copyright?. So it can be very time consuming for journalists to do. On the other side of that coin, is that a journalist will want to write and publish to multiple platforms and devices, meaning getting access to the original image is the only way they can do that, and resize the image properly etc. etc.
You both make really good points. I see how this service works and I am guessing it will really help out that audience.
Ok, you KNOW exactly what I was thinking at first about the “rules engine”. Then I kept reading. It looks legit. I might have to give it a go and see what happens!
That first impression is familiar to us! Sadly the last time I started talking to people first about the Rule Engine and the tech they started falling asleep – so now we ‘market’ the benefits of the platform instead. It’s always hard to get the perfect mix of tech/marketing. Yeah the first version of the app is coming out soon – which is a nicer method to share photos compared to the desktop method we have now. So will be a great time to test things.