Citizen journalism hits the big screen

Had a great time judging last night at the last of four Pier 38 screenings in San Francisco, put on by NewTeeVee. (They’re holding a fifth in September in New York.) This one focused on citizen journalism, with six well-done submissions covering the gamut from a gay parade in San Francisco to coverage of the Scott Peterson murder trial.

I held out special praise for Alive in Baghdad, which shows the realities on the ground in Iraq not through a detached, "objective" lens but through a first-person engagement with Iraqi citizens that fosters a genuineness and authenticity not seen in interviews with Western reporters. Co-founder Brian Conley should be excited that they won first prize, which gets them a 1-terabyte hard drive.

As NewTeeVee wrote, Alive in Baghdad’s “Sectarian Violence is a Daily Experience”
was far and away the audience favorite, drawing 42 percent of the
text-message vote. Coming in second was Internet Celebrities’ funny “Bodega” riff on nutrition in the Bronx [oh my God, check it out!], followed by GeoBeats’ upbeat piece on the Mumbai Dabbawalas lunch catering business. Celso Dulay’s piece on San Francisco Gay Pride also had a strong following.

Here’s NewTeeVee’s writeup of the event along with photos. And a dispatch in the Wired blog: Party Report: Citizen Journalism Hits The Big Screen. (Wired photo above.)

You can check out the screened videos and other submissions here. 

It was also great to finally meet jazz musician Jon Hammond in person (thanks for the CD, Jon!). Also met Omer Shaikh, co-founder and CEO of Friction.tv, a site for community video that fosters debate; they’re based in London and opening up a San Francisco office soon. And, Sue Kwon, business reporter for KPIX-TV Channel 5; "24 Hours On Craigslist" director Michael Ferris Gibson; Andrew Fitzgerald, manager of Current Journalism for Current TV; Daniel Sevett, JVP of content and community, and Tim Liu, the product marketing manager for Metacafe; Roger Macdonald, director of research and info systems for LinkTV; the community manager of Flickr; and familiar faces like Enric Teller,  Scott Beale, Adriana Gascoigne, Josh Wolf, and others.

JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.