Paris-based French daily Le Parisien and its national arm Aujourd'hui have developed a user-generated section of their site, in conjunction with Citizenside, a citizen photo journalism agency that recently launched similar projects with the French branch of free daily Metro, and French radio station RTL.

The new site, You, invites readers to provide text, photo and video contributions, or to alert the community of a specific event. Items are immediately published on the site, but Le Parisien staff will check the authenticity of contributions (using Citizenside's technology) and then mark them as 'verified.'

A site that welcomes reader contributions could be useful to a news outlet firstly because it increases the volume of content available, at a low cost, and secondly because it encourages readers to become more engaged in the publication.

Australian public broadcaster the ABC has launched a new digital initiative called ABC Open to feature user-generated content on existing ABC local websites.

The initiative aims to develop the digital skills of local communities to tell their own stories. The reports produced through the project will be published on the broadcaster's local websites and other sites, and may also be distributed on radio, television or mobile platforms.

More than 50 editors and producers, based in local radio offices around the country, will be charged with helping communities design and develop media-rich local stories.

The launch comes just after the ABC announced plans to launch a 24-hour television news channel.

The chief executive of major Australian news publisher Fairfax Media, Brian McCarthy, said that ABC Open could force some Fairfax-owned local newspapers to close.

ABC Open "threatens to undermine the viability of the excellent service commercial media organisations such as Fairfax Media and Rural Press have provided to regional and rural Australia for decades,'' he said. The Fairfax Media group owns Rural Press.

"I do not believe it is the role of the ABC to disrupt the commercial landscape by building empires with public funds."

About a month ago, Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University, published a post on his blog about an idea that could make journalism better by allowing more people to participate in the journalistic process: ExplainThis.

Aware of the importance of context and research in the news environment, Rosen explained to the Poynter Online that his idea was based on a user-centric approach to news.

As conceived by Rosen, ExplainThis would have two parts. One would be an open system through which users can ask and answer questions and vote on them. The second part would involve "journalists standing by."

According to Rosen, journalists would monitor questions, ultimately answering those that meet three conditions:

1) many people are asking the same thing
2) the question can't be answered well via an ordinary or a sophisticated search
3) answering the question would require the work of journalism, in other words, serious investigative and explanatory work.

Walter de Mattos, editor-in-chief of Brazilian sports daily LANCE!, described to the World Editors Forum the different areas in which his paper operates and how the paper is tackling changes in the country's digital landscape.

The sports industry in Brazil is fast-growing and focused on football, de Mattos explained. Next year's World Cup and the 2016 Olympics in Rio are attracting a lot of attention.

LANCE! reaches over 12 million people monthly. The newspaper's audience is generally young, de Mattos said, with 50% of readers aged under 25. "Twelve-year-olds have subscriptions to LANCE!," de Mattos said, "and teachers recommend it in schools to boys who are having trouble getting into reading." Marketing focuses on young people, partly because older people are not likely to be put off by this, de Mattos said.

LANCE! has newsrooms centred in Rio and Sao Paolo, which are multimedia, integrated operations. Integration is a "key success factor" for the paper, said de Mattos. Everyone works in the same environment, and the production team produces content for every platform.