The Guardian has teamed up with telco Everything Everywhere to launch a new online news platform, called Guardian Witness.
Through its newly launched iOS and Android apps, members of the public are being encouraged to submit videos, pictures and stories according to different ‘assignments’ set each week by The Guardian. There is also opportunity for readers to suggest assignments, and request stories for The Guardian itself to follow up. It’s one of the better-organised efforts for capturing citizen journalism we’ve seen, and while the much-touted concept of ‘hyper local’ and user-generated news perhaps hasn’t scaled heights predicted a few years ago, participation in and commentary on news events has never been more intense. News broadcasters are increasingly turning to the public for eyewitness material and opinion, and social media continues to grow in importance for modern news sourcing and distribution.
The Guardian will review content as it’s submitted, offering a level of editorship/curation which should help to structure contributions and ultimately win the respect of its readership. The best pieces of content will also be published to the main Guardian website.
