Citizenside partners Metro International for global launch of UGC tools

Citizenside, the pro-am photo and video agency, has made its first international partnership with Metro International.

The deal will see the Paris-based company, which is part-owned by Agence France-Presse, launch its white label reporter kit product in eight countries creating MetroReporter sites.

The reporter kit gives news organisations a tool to find and encourage users who contribute reliable, news-related images and videos.

The international launch will begin with a trial on Metro's French site and be backed by a print, online and radio publicity campaign costing around €500,000.

The kits also builds a community site allowing users to share photos and videos with one another in addition to the title's editorial team.

As part of MetroReporter, if a member of the community's contribution is republished online or in print they will be paid between €10 and €70 for their contribution. Metro has agreed to regularly publish and therefore pay for user-generated content as part of the trial.

Citizenside has long supported the payment of users contributing content to news sites and last year trialled a service with AFP, which gave the agency's 7,000 partners the option to buy images submitted to Citizenside with contributors receiving up to 75 per cent of the sale price.

The site's reporter kit is already used by partner 20minutes and French magazine Voici, and Citizenside today announced a partnership with French radio station RTL.

"You have to be very transparent. Lots of media houses when they get amateur content are just trying to promote the exclusive and they're not very clear [in labelling amateur content]. The more you say it's from amateurs the more your other readers will be concerned and will think they can also contribute," Matthieu Stefani, vice president of Citizenside.com, told Journalism.co.uk in an interview last year.

"You have to make them understand that they are part of the news organisation. You don't just read the Daily Telegraph, for example, you are the Daily Telegraph. You can participate and it should be different for different papers with their own editorial lines."

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