Now Public and You Tube - bringing out the citizen journalist in you
To help you channel Brian Williams or Katie Couric, Now Public is teaming up with You Tube so you can associate You Tube video with the story you've written.
Becoming the news reporter you've always wanted to (Christiane Ammanpour watch your back) is super simple. You sign up for an account, a painless process requiring only your name, email address, and zip code. You then activate your account, and voila! you are now a reporter. You can write a story, upload your own photos and videos to it, or select some from the You Tube library.
You can even associate photos or videos to stories that you don't write, which Now Public offers to you as a way to make the story better. Hmmm. What if you wanted to make the story worse and added photos or video that was totally inappropriate for the story?
You could if you wanted to, (see below) but that wouldn't be very nice. Hopefully, there are a lot more thoughtful citizen journalists out there who will play nice.
If enough people vote for your story, it advances to the front page. (Kind of Digg like). Some of the stories that made the front page yesterday were/are:
Fire Burns Hot and Furious through the Pine Barrens - Communities Threatened
(story about a fire started by an AF F16 making practice rounds at a bombing range).
Free Will Exists in Fruit Flies
Aboriginals in Brazil deeply offended by Pope Benedict's recent statements on "Immaculate Genocide"
Mr Edible: What's wrong with eating horse meat?
So, you just never know what people think is news. You can make money at being a citizen journalist too, especially if people like your stories. There is a way for you to get tipped via your paypal account. Who needs journalism school anymore?
