Live notes from the #ipinip on Sustainability

First is Errol Barnett, CNN correspondent for South Africa in interview with Burt Hermann, co-founder of Storify

“Anybody can be a reporter now, is a reporter. We’d like to distinguish that from a journalist. The role of the journalist is even more important to sift through that and understand what is going on.

“I’d always been interested in technology. I remember being at the AP and making suggestions and it wasn’t a place, with its decades if history, that was easy to I’d something new.”

Hermann telling the audience that he went to Stamford and then decided to go it alone.

“We are not profitable, twitter is not profitable. This stuff is not easy. We started trying different things.

“I was interested in combining social media with journalism. ”
He said that when they first started, they didn’t believe ordinary people would spend a lot of time following streams and hashtags on twitter.

Storify only had ten people working in it up until it was bought recently.

“We started with a journalism focus but it’s been interesting to see how many other people want to do this.” Gave examples of NGOs and even British Royal family and White House who use it now.

” start for something that’s good for specific use but then see uses elsewhere.”

“We were recently bought which gives some return for investors. Now people alike the BBC are paying customers. It doesn’t say that it is Storify but that’s us.”

“Another model is to pair up journalists with the publishers to find a way – native advertising. More authentic on a site, not banners everywhere, creating something readers want to read.”

“Protecting sources is important. I still think we need journalists on the ground in these places, I am not saying this will replace that at all.”

“We don’t edit the stories. We have people covering things from elections to cat videos right. We take a very agnostic view on what people are writing about.

“Just crossed over 1m users on Storify. Not just journalists. Get 20m looking at Storify stories on our own embeds.”

“Talking about collaborations where media organisations can also be a good source.”

“Storyful started around the same time. They are a news wire and verify news items online. It’s like forensic analysis. It’s a lot of work to verify that stuff. We are ‘t doing that verification work. ”

Herman now being asked about CNN ireport and how those items would now be vetted.

He says the challenge for journalists is to build the brand and you don’t need to be a giant but can share and go to.”

Going to questions from audience now:

‘What about copyright?’ – we only publish thinks that are public. We don’t download and save any pictures, all links. With text we do download under US law that’s considered acceptable use.

Good question from the audience asking for breakdown of business plan.

“We started as a free platform and left it users to ask us what it was they wanted. The things are developed over time. We realised it was more of a professional tool.

“We only started some of the paid things last spring and then acquired by lifefyre.” He won’t reveal any actual figures.

“Hard to build a company based on journalists because journalists don want to pay for anything basically.” That has to be the sound bite of this session!

Being asked – what protection do you offer your users from being hacked.

Says worst problem atm. Is spam. “Everything on Storify is public so we don’t have anything to hide.”