We spotted CNN scouring Facebook for fast photos, and talked about their use of i-Reports — those-on-the-fly eyewitness accounts BlackBerried in, that turn every viewer into a fact-finder. Now CNN has gone one step further: they've established iReport.com. It's a whole site dedicated to news by you and for you. Here's how they describe it:

Welcome to a brand new beta site for uncensored, user-powered news. CNN built the tools, you take it from there. All the stories here are user-generated and instant: CNN does not vet or verify their authenticity or accuracy before they post. The ones with the "On CNN" stamp have been vetted and used in CNN news coverage.
Now their tagline is "Unedited. Unfiltered. News." While eyewitness accounts are great, I'm not entirely sure I'm so hot-to-trot to get rid of the editing and filtering of my news. To see what I mean, read more. When one of the headlines is:

Well, I don't know... It's not exactly how I imagine Wolf Blitzer would report the story. What do you think? Do you want to join the iReport force? Would you read these stories?









Mango
I think this is a great way to get news. I mean, open source has worked so well for Wikipedia. Now excuse me, I have to do my report on how Martians invented television in the twelfth century.
1I don't know about that. I mean, news is edited for a reason. Tabloids run rampant, and there are always lies going around about celebs. Do we want that even more in our news on real issues? To raciccarone, I once looked up Karl Rove on wikipedia. Someone said he was married to Richard Simmons, obviously a lie.
2It could be a great tool for many people:
-- budding reporters
-- budding satirists
-- budding assholes
I guess it will be interesting to see how it pans out.
3That headline totally reads like a Katie Couric blog...
4I don't know if it is a good idea. There are already soooooo many uncredible sources out there. This idea might steal some viewers from Fox, though. Fox loves to make stuff up!
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