"A global network will be launched this week designed to bridge the gap between news organisations and journalists across the world," Rachel McAthy has reported on journalism.co.uk. Findstringers.com will serve as a network where publishers can find freelancers and vice versa.

According to McAthy, founder Gary Symons developed the concept based on his experiences as a freelancer. "I became very familiar with the freelance world and some of the problems associated with it. Two of the big ones are that you have to find people to hire you...secondly if you're taking video, photos or that kind of thing then you've actually got to get your digital material to that person." Findstringers.com thus aims to fully integrate the journalist with the newsroom "within five seconds."

Offering similar services since 2001 is allthecontent.com, which describes itself as a "press agency of the digital era." It has as its mission the combining of "coherent technical skills with flexible and competitive business visions," and envisions a future where "high quality services and "optimized production processes" will be the status quo. ATC also claims the ability to "provide content for all platforms, all type of delivery media, and for all industries with content needs."

The internet has made news easier and faster to report, just as economic trends have slashed newspaper budgets, forcing publishers to reduce the number of journalists on their payrolls and leaving a lot of dedicated journalists on the freelance path. Twitter may have become the winning site for breaking news, but it would be a plus if these freelance journalists have a medium for instantaneous reporting apart from social networking sites and unpaid blogs. In the same vein, papers on smaller budgets will have to rely more on freelance content.

Findstringers.com "will be available in several languages." The site would charge unaffiliated journalists a subscription fee to create an entry barrier "for people who might not be serious about the work." Working with "associations, unions, schools and professional organizations," Symons hopes to build a network of at least 10,000 journalists within the first two years.

Source: journalism.co.uk, allthecontent.com