The question is, if you shoot footage on your cellphone and post it to your blog, or even to a relatively established site like NewsVine, will anyone notice? The odds are not in your favor. But for the last few years, CNN has been accepting footage from amateur videographers and broadcasting it on television through its I-Report program.
Now CNN has launched a new site dedicated to citizen journalism. iReport.com differs from CNN's previous initiative in that nobody will be filtering or editing most of the content submitted by users. CNN may choose to use some of the citizen reports on the air, but as a standalone site, iReport is sort of like YouTube for amateur journalists.
Videos run the gamut from interviews with voters in presidential primary states to firsthand footage of disasters. You can sort videos chronologically, by most views, highest rated, or search the site. Or you can check out the "newsiest" videos, which is determined by how recently a video was uploaded, and what kind of response it has gotten from the community.
One question is whether people who had been planning newsworthy videos on posting videos to YouTube will be willing to use iReport. Our guess is yes, since there's a chance the cable news network might pick up their video and broadcast it nationally. But we're also wondering how CNN plans to keep people from posting less newsworthy items. How long do you think it will take before the iReport web site is littered with videos of teenagers talking to the camera about their Facebook profiles?
