March 21, 2007 - Amateur photographers will now be able to broadcast their juicy celebrity snapshots or breaking news captured with their cell phone cameras to the world - and get paid for them. Scoopt, the first image distributor to sell photos on the behalf of citizen journalists, was recently acquired by Getty Images, one of the largest providers of images for the media.
Newsworthy images submitted to Scoopt must meet Getty Images' quality standard. If they do, they will be broadcast to media outlets alongside images taken by professional photojournalists.
"New technology has made it easier to capture and distribute imagery, leading to citizen photojournalism that is increasingly relevant to the news cycle," said Jonathan Klein, co-founder and CEO of Getty Images, in a March 12 company press release. "While this genre will never replace the award-winning photojournalism for which we're known, it's a highly complementary offering that enables us to meet the evolving imagery needs of a broad customer base."
According to the press release, Scoopt photographers retain the copyright of their images and grant Getty Images a 12-month exclusive license, which includes the right to re-license the image to multiple publications. According to Scoopt’s website, a 40 percent royalty is paid to the photographer each time the photo is sold.
Late last year, Scoopt invited users of the popular online photo sharing website Flickr to tag their photos “scoopt” for consideration for distribution, paving the path between the media and citizen journalists.
