Italian daily la Repubblica has launched a new platform for users to submit videos. Reporter, as the project is called, is open to everyone, from citizen reporters to video-makers to semi-professional journalists, who can upload their content onto the website. Photos are accepted also but the platform is more focused on video.

Repubblica’s Reporter aims “to turn users into 'aerials' on the ground to contribute to live reporting on Italy”, the website explained.

In order to enlarge and develop its video content, Repubblica is turning to citizens and users with the eventual aim of creating a circle of video-makers who will be available to Repubblica: a network of potential freelancers with a sprinkle of citizen journalists.

The Editors Weblog spoke to Repubblica’s Riccardo Staglianò who explained that Reporter is an improvement of the already existing spontaneous wave of contributions to the paper from readers and non-professional journalists. Before, they could only send an email suggesting a subject or submitting a video, while now Reporter gives readers and video-makers a more organized and formalized structure to contribute to the paper.

Some Italian newspapers could be at risk due to the cuts in state subsidies that the new technocrat government is planning to implement.

The Financial Times reported last week that about 100 titles are facing closure as Mario Monti's administration confirmed cuts in public subsidies for the press from €170m to €53m budgeted for next year. These had already been proposed by the previous government led by Silvio Berlusconi.

At risk are wellknown papers such the leftwing Liberazione, Il Manifesto and L'Unità, the former communist party daily founded by Antonio Gramsci in 1924 and the Catholic daily Avvenire.

Print publishers in Italy can benefit from direct as well as indirect subsidies. Indirect support includes VAT reductions and reduced postal and telephone rates. Direct subsidies are given to newspapers with at least two members of parliament among the owners or published by co-operatives of journalists.

Italian online-only paper Linkiesta recently explained how direct government financial assistance to the press has developed over recent decades.

A 'news 2.0' experiment was carried out yesterday, November 3, in Italy: a three-hour news programme was streamed on multiple platforms, a joint effort of SkyTG24, local satellite TV stations, radio shows and the web.

After seeing his news programme Annozero - which used to air on national broadcasting channel RAI2 - cancelled, anchorman Michele Santoro decided to launch a new programme called "Servizio Pubblico" (Public Service) which is the official description of what the national broadcasting network is supposed to be.

"The civil revolution" - as described by Santoro - was a way to bypass the TV 'monopoly which exists in Italy, aiming to shine a light on the censorship that doesn't provide Italian citizens with all the information they would need, and to show the power of free information which is possible due to the power of the web.

The programme hopes to give the public that information that the authors claim is not provided by TV in Italy, both public and private, which the organizers of Servizio Pubblico blame to be controlled by politics.

The trial of American student Amanda Knox has been the on-and-off focus of global media attention since 2007, when the murder of British student Meredith Kercher took place in the Italian city of Perugia. This latest trial is an appeal against a verdict given in 2009 that sentenced Knox to 26 years in jail for her alleged role in Kercher's murder. Knox's then boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, was also implicated in the crime and sentenced to 25 years.

Yesterday, the appeal verdict was delivered: not guilty. After four years in jail for Kercher's murder, Knox was released.

Naturally, the media were ready for the announcement. It's an old game, reporting the verdict of a big case. Gone are the days when newspapers would print two copies of their front page - one anticipating a guilty verdict and one in case the defendant were found not guilty - but the guessing, the preparation and the anticipation still remains. Now, in the age of instantaneous digital mobile news, the challenge is to be the news organisaion to break the story first - oh yes, and to be the one that publishes the correct information.