With smartphones, homeless magazine vendors to become citizen journalists

The Editors Weblog / Press Gazette

Homeless people in the U.K. who sell an entertainment magazine called The Big Issue will soon receive smartphones in an effort to turn them into citizen journalists. The Press Gazette reports, “The vendors will be encouraged to blog and use social networking websites like Twitter and Facebook to capture and upload images and audio, according to Big Issue founder John Bird.” Vendors buy the weekly magazines for £1 and sell them for £2; the charity hopes the income will help them get off the streets. Bird notes that the vendors are uniquely suited to be newsgatherers because they “stand on streets up and down the country come rain or shine.”