Friday, February 29, 2008

"A news version of YouTube"

CNN has launched a separate iReport site. The company has had iReports -- viewer-submitted content -- for months, but any time iReports were used, it was because it had gone through a vetting process. This new site, which is in beta, offers reports that are unedited and that represent ALL the reports submitted. Some will still be used by CNN, but at that point they'll be displayed on the "professional" site. Jon Dube has an excellent write-up about this on Poynter, kicking off his revisioned column.

1 comment:

kjr said...

We discussed this in Media and Society and the class had concerns about CNN backing a site for unfiltered "amateur" journalism. Although the look and feel is not consistent with CNN's website, there is no mistaking CNN is behind it. Just as I thought, the site is a mix of some credible and interesting citizen journalism, but even more pointless and poorly written journal-esque posts. Of particular alarm is an offensive post about how Islam is a "religion of hate." Nice.
I do like that the site has a blog where a CNN employee(?)points out the more newsworthy reports, though. It helps to filter out the crazies without actually filtering the site. Still, this whole thing doesn't sit well with me...