Especially in the case of a breaking news story – e.g an accident – when a newspaper's own photographers cannot be on-site quickly enough, 'live' photos taken by persons who  come upon the scene by chance can offer newspapers a welcome opportunity that they are pleased to use - and perhaps even reward with a small payment.

P2S Media Group in Finland recognised this potential of supply and demand and developed a suitable business model: the result is a Scoopshot Service. The Scoopshot Task model, in which the newspaper commissions specific photos, was created in order to tailor a gigantic resources offering to an aimed need. Just how well this works is something that numerous media users – e.g. the Metro free newspapers in several countries, Het Laatste Nieuws in Belgium and most recently  WAZ in Germany – have already experienced.

Niko Ruokosuo, CEO of P2S Media Group, explained the concept last July in an interview with Dean Roper, Editor-in-Chief of World News Publishing Focus.

Ruokosuo now reports about a very impressive demonstration of the possibilities of crowdsourcing, triggered by a TV programme that attracted a total of 20,000 Scoopshooters (image suppliers) to the company within hours. "Completely crazy" is how Ruokosuo describes the response to the first "photo task" of the company's new customer in Germany, WAZ, that produced 1500 photos of coffee cups (though not exactly a news-related task in this case) within about two hours.

This shows what an impact a clever startup can make.