Mobile multi-media technology and social networking are changing the way news is gathered, with first reports increasingly coming from someone on site who happened to witness an event or its aftermath. Harris Technology has just released a new product called Newsfish that integrates ‘citizen journalism’ content into newsroom newswire services.
To make best use of this citizen journalism trend, newsrooms need to be able to integrate its content into the, often automated, workflow. Newsfish is an app for smartphones that seeks to achieve this integration for both customers and news staff.
The thinking is that a broadcaster will encourage its audience to download its own version of the app, skinned to include its branding, and use this as a way of building loyalty and of ensuring that it gets the first breaking news ahead of the competition, after going through internal newsroom processes.
For example, a citizen journalist shoots a video of the event, and adds some basic information describing what has happened. This description is added into metadata drawn from the smartphone, including the mobile number and IP address for verification, as well as date and time.
If the smartphone includes a GPS receiver the report will be geo-tagged, too, again helping with authentication of the story: the sub-editor will know that the event took place when and where the contributor said it did.
The story is then sent to the broadcaster and entered into the Harris Invenio newsroom workflow system, which automatically populates the asset database with the Newsfish metadata. The content is then checked, rewritten, edited and published in exactly the same way as any other story within the news agenda.
As well as being used by citizens who happen to witness a news-worthy event, it could also be used by registered freelances and stringers as a quick means of contributing stories. The result is an increase in local, personalised news, as well as a swift and secure method of handling the inevitable influx of amateur videos.
Newsfish is being displayed at IBC 2010 in Amsterdam.