Sweden: Metro to experiment with citizen journalism

Posted by Diana Epstein on March 15, 2006 at 3:24 PM

Sweden's most distributed daily the Metro will launch 26 new local web sites that will incorporate 50-60 volunteers recruited to write and take photos from their area. Sakari Pitkänen, editor-in-chief at Metro, hopes to fill the gap made by Stockholm-based newspapers reports on local news in the suburbs.

The new reporters will take a “crash course” in journalism. The quality of writing is not an issue for the Metro because Pitkänen ‘hopes the collective will monitor itself.” The volunteers, or "citizen reporters," will get paid depending on how successful the article is and how “high in the hierarchy an article will make it, the highest level being the ‘dead-tree version’ of Metro.”

The project is set to launch in May.

Source: Media Culpa [Through the Ifra Executive News Service]