MSNBC launches into full-fledged citizen journalism

Posted by Jean Yves Chainon on February 28, 2007 at 12:53 PM

MSNBC.com’s FirstPerson might be one of the most complete citizen journalism projects conducted by mainstream media so far. It combines user submissions with editorial support and filtering, as well as a user voting and ranking system.

FirstPerson “looks like one of the best mainstream CJ projects I’ve ever seen, combining a number of imaginative requests for user generated content and backing them up with editorial support and filtering, user votes to ‘engender a sense of ownership and loyalty’, and exposure on TV,” says the Online Journalism blog.

Using MSNBC’s multimedia network, the NBC Nightly News used FirstPerson for one of its features on adults caring for their ageing parents. Over 6,000 user submissions on the topic were sent to FirstPerson’s editors.

While many mainstream sources soured at the arrival of new media and user-generated content, most are now adopting, in one form or another, a user-generated feature.

The New York Times introduced its first user-generated video content experiment last week with a ‘How we Met’ feature.

CNN.com has an ‘I Report’ section for consumers to send their stories and videos.

Now that newspapers and media have realized they can’t ignore the growth in importance of citizen journalism and the Web 2.0 generation, they are trying to use their experience in the field to provide adapted platforms for this content.

Source: Online Journalism Blog through Ifra