CNN launched iReport.com yesterday, a “citizen journalism” site dedicated to user news submissions.
Andy Warhol said in 1968 that “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes,” and iReport.com is offering users at least part of their 15 minutes as submissions may be used on CNN itself. But unfortunately that’s where it ends, because there is no payment for submissions. CNN claims this is a site is “where the community — not CNN — became the most trusted name in news,” but trust doesn’t equal money at a time where more and more sites and startups explore ways of compensating users for their time and effort.
There is some good content on the site, and CNN has selected star reporters in a social networking style popularity contest that encourages decent content, that and users can vote on stories as well. The weakness in the idea is that submissions are not pre-vetted or pre-read (or seemingly post-read), and you get stories like this one that is currently sitting as the fourth most viewed story on the site. I’m sure the weather in New York might be disgusting, but does a story that consists of one line and a picture of snow really make for great reporting? Then there’s stories like this one; Testing testing…… I can see people having proper fun with this in the coming days, until CNN ultimately decides that not moderating the site is a dumb idea.
Bored TechCrunch readers should feel free to add their own stories to CNN iReport and post the links. There’s no prize for the best one, other than your 0.25 seconds of Warhol fame in the TechCrunch comment thread 
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Great business opportunity for a startup. If you offer citizen journalist compensation for their footage that can then be sold to networks. I think it’s silly not to offer some sort of revenue to the authors.
You should put up a poll.
http://www.cjreport.com does exactly that, but better. Has a voting system as well, and a revenue sharing program.
It will probably be iGold. Not a cheap name (they paid 750K for it recently) but I’m confident they have a winner.
Sahar Sarid
http://www.Conceptualist.com - Blog
more copycats ha.
This is just the starting, so you should not be too harsh to them. Yes, adding a post-read voting system is the only required thing to make the whole thing self-evolving. Make it a digg for citizen journalism and you won’t have to worry about the stories coming on the front page of the site. Then the mai foucs of the CNN should be to keep on fine-tuning the system, to get rid of unnecessary stories and spams etc.
While it’s fashionable for startups to talk about paying people for their content, has this ever been successful in the longtail? Doubtful. This effort will likely take some iterating still, but kudos to cnn for presumably building this inhouse. At least these guys have the user base to pull it off…
From the iReport site: 89,944 videos submitted, 915 on air last month.
If my math’s right, that’s 1%
Maximum respect for the intern who has to watch them…
Everything finally end up to be a news aggregation. Enjoy Indian Entertainment News aggregation on Movie MAZIC http://moviemazic.com
–
Thanks
Prerna
Don’t forget iHam and iLoin! http://ijam.es/
Do you think these spanish guys are trying to be taken over by Steve Jobs?
Just signed up for iReport.com(CNN!).And “No search results for Twitter”.Disappointment.
This is old news.
An Argentininan major news network has its blog since a long time where users can upload their videos and photos. They’re not automatically published though, but the idea has been proved great. Many news they show on channel are taken from the blog (or footage).
http://videos.tn.com.ar/
Cheers!
CNN’s iReport - Unedited. Unfiltered. News.
Isn’t what we already get from CNN, MSNBC, and Fox?
absolute crap. take a look for yourself. people sending in photos of damaged local street signs, etc…
iLame — I understand the intent, but to echo dave’s comments. the articles are crap. the benefit CNN receives in the first instance of a calamity they get folks to submit their photos/videos before they’re able to get their crews to the scene. Otherwise its awesome stories like the one below. Boy — I hope my diet and exercise program has the same results!
http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH.....index.html
This is smart. The first time we have a big catastrophe like the Tsunami in Asia or Hurricane Katrina people will be all over this site.
I know professional content creators find it inconceivable that people would produce decent content for free. But I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
In some cases, payment helps. In a lot of others, it hurts. Read Cohn’s Punished by Rewards to find out why.
What’s CNN?
I like the Newsvine + MSNBC model better.
I think the main problem here is the open door to abuse. It is probably going to become the wild west of self-promotion thinly veiled as some sort of news. I’ll be interested to see how they can counteract that by having some sort of editorial process, even if that takes the form of a citizen team that can vote to kill an article.
This effort will likely take some iterating still, but kudos to cnn for presumably building this inhouse.
Encouraging to see mainstream media embracing citizen journalism, but independent platforms are already doing great things. GroundReport.com allows open submission, pays contributors based on traffic and uses community ratings to build a dynamic front page.
SHUT UP with using i already!!!!!
What the h?? Does CNN not have any creative people in their marketing department? The BEST you can come up with was ‘i’ something? I can’t believe we’re THAT limited in the naming dept.
Hey I know, why don’t you go work for a car company and suggest they use an ‘X’ in naming their new SUV, cuz that would be super original.
iDontKnow…
Nothing particularly novel about the site itself, but if they make good use of the CNN brand then they’ll have a leg up on other citizen journalism sites. At the moment though, it doesn’t look like that’s happening. Nary a CNN logo to be found.
Yeah…”Unedited”…”Unbridled”…”Uninteresting!”
horrible, horrible logo
they were certainly in a ihurry to bring this out. …iReport, iReports, iReporters…really ithe iworld iis isuch ia iwonderful iplace ito ilive !
see i told you…ihurry …
ithe iworld iis isuch ia iwonderful iplace ito ilive iin !
love it
hai
i am major GSChauhan from India. I am putting aFood radiation plant here in India. I wants to sale radiated agro product on net. i will require the bunch of E mail address who wants to purchase the radiated agro product. please help me my product will be cheapest in the world.
The point that CNN misses is that If news was a computer program, it has been Microsoft - a closed source program. Today, news needs to shift to an open source model and become the Linux of reporting. On CNN.com and iReport.com it achieves neither.
On February 15th the top story on the iReport homepage was entitled “Breaking News Ketchup.” The second story was on the weather in New York City, which happened to be lousy. As if bad weather in February was news worthy? For those seeking substance, there was a story on the children’s character Elmo posing as a prostitute. Clearly, on iReport, the online community is amusing itself to death.
With all that is happening in the world, who cares about what’s on iReport? Clearly there is a better way for media. That’s where iConflict.com comes in.
Hi, sorry, but I’m lost… isn’t CNN iReport a year or two old already? What am I missing?? Please enlighten me ^_^ Thanks.
CNN is brilliant! (not really). They underestimate people and must think we’re all idiots. Silly videos is one thing, and I guess iReport.com will get plenty of those but good citizen journalism will eventually be syndicated and be compensated for. . … BTW, CNN, There are ways to syndicate your stories AND get paid! The technology is ironically called iReporter, to be your own media mogul. A group of about 2,000 iReporters are banding together for just this purpose at http://www.ireporter.tv
This is what happens when big media companies are faced with the prospect of a fragmented market, and the decline of the mass-media business model.
Rather than accept that their cable TV subscribers are watching less CNN, because the shift is part of a major trend, they experiment in uncreative ways that merely further exposes their apparent weakness.
Good idea!
I think people should better send their photos and videos on Citizenside.com and they might get something out of them
One of Citizneside member made a big hit last month with the French trader Jerôme Kerviel (the one who lost 7 billion…). He shot a 3 minutes video and sent it on http://www.citizenside.com . he made more than $ 50k !
What do you think?
I win: http://www.scunnered.com/?p=9
As dot com investor with a political arm, ireport is overrun with cnn-viewers finest liberal nutjobs. IReport is nothing more than a water cooler right outside the Oval Office where all the ultra far left wing lunatics hang out. As a conservative, I’ve had conservative articles outright rejected from being posted, repeatedly. I use the site to test-run freshly brainstormed ideas for free and when an article flops on IReport, I know it’s a winner because the IReport community is a rather uneducated bunch. If you want a serious blogging experience where you go toe-to-toe with wonks, pros, and experts, IReport ain’t the place. IReporters often group together via site-only local email and launch organized attacks on other IReporters until the targeted reporters get banned by IReport Admin for violating community language/dialogue guidelines. It’s an unofficial liberals-only community internet country club.