Rawporter: New Free iPhone App For Citizen Journalists

Rob Gaige and Kevin Davis, tech guy and TV sales guy were having drinks in Charlotte, NC, where they live when a car crashed into a restaurant next door to them

A gaggle of people shot the even on their iPhones, and, after the crash was cleared away, the local news crew came and shot the yellow tape thing.

That evening on the news, the only video that they saw was the yellow tape.
None of the stations had elected use the ‘citizen’ video.

This does not surprise me, nor anyone who has been in ‘the business’, but Gaige and Davis decided to do something about it.

They created Rawporter.com, a free app for your iPhone.

Here’s how it works:

if you see ‘breaking news’, just shoot the video.
Then, hit the app.

The app sends the video to a central server where it’s made available any TV (or online) news service that wants to buy it.

Only 1,000 people have downloaded it so far, but it’s still in the beta testing phase.

Here’s their motto:  Get news, Get famous, Get paid.

Catchy.

Personally, I am not a big fan of the ‘accidental’ video school.  (ie, if a tornado happens hit your house, shoot some video of it and we’ll give you $100.)

I always had a rule of thumb that whevener I flew, I would keep my video camera nearby in case something ‘happened’.

Once, in the late 90s, I was doing a story on the then new Airbus for the than also new Christian Science Monitor TV News show on Discovery.

I went to Toulouse, where the Airbus factory was and a bunch of us journalists were allowed on the first ‘test flight’ of the new ‘fly by wire’ control system. We were going on a short hop to Paris.

Once we got in the air, the plane began to fishtail wildly.

The pilot go on the PA and announced that we were to assume the ‘crash position’ for a ‘hard landing’.  You know that’s where you put your hands on the seat in front of you, bend you head down as far as you can… and pee in your pants.

Lemme tell you, the LAST thing I felt like doing was breaking out the old video camera.

But that’s just me.

Anyway, back to Rawporter.

If you wanna read more about Rawporter, you can go here.