Who are we?
Photo: Laure Bernard, http://www.laurebernard.com
Citizenside's goal is to create the largest online community of amateur and independent reporters where everyone can share their vision of the news by uploading photos and videos for fellow reporters to see.
If you have an interesting news-related image or video, Citizenside will contact media outlets on your behalf and offers you a much higher percentage of the sales price than those offered by traditional agencies (up to 75%).
Citizenside was created in 2006 by three young associates passionate about the news (two cousins and a friend!) whose complementary experience offers you the best representation when it comes to selling your content.
In November 2007, Agence France-Presse (AFP), the 3rd largest news agency in the world, and the IAM company became shareholders in the Citizenside agency (formerly Scooplive). Primary shareholder of the IAM company and ex-CEO of France Televisions, Xavier Gouyou-Beauchamps, then became president of Citizenside.
The three founders of Citizenside:
Julien Robert (also known as "The Brain") is the director of the information systems for Citizenside. Julien has an engineering degree from SUPINFO Paris and an MSc in Web Technologies from Oxford Brookes University. He created and developed the citizenside website from A to Z.
Philippe Checinski (also known as "Phil Goldfingers") is our finance and accounting director. Philippe, while working in marketing and finance before forming Citizenside, developed the skills of an outstanding negotiator. He is responsible for ensuring that Citizenside users get the highest possible price for their uploaded images and videos.
Matthieu Stefani (also known as "Matt in touch") helped to launch the free daily newspaper “Metro” in France before working with Metro International. His passion: putting people in touch. With Citizenside, he tries to speed up the flow of information between individuals and the media, so that content uploaded on the site gets published in the news as quickly as possible.
They have joined us! As it was developing, Citizenside saw its team expand:
Olivier Corgeron is the new computer services manager. A fellow graduate of SUPINFO, he coordinates with Julien Robert to further develop the Citizenside website and those of its partners. Nothing slows down this techie on the cutting edge!
Aurélien Viers is the editor-in-chief of Citizenside. Sciences Po and CFJ graduate, Aurélien worked for the television news channel LCI as a correspondent in Japan. Our editor-in-chief is in charge of correspondence with media outlets, vetting the content contributors upload, the editorial development of the website and animating the community of Citizenside members.
Nicolas Filio is a journalist who joined Citizenside to assist Aurélien Viers with the editorial workload. CFJ graduate, he worked for the media analysis TV program "Arrêt sur images", the eco-friendly magazine Terra Eco and the first French daily newspaper 20 Minutes. Nicolas checks the validity of the images received by Citizenside, juices up the website and keeps in touch with the citizen reporters.
