CNN’s Cit-J Video Site iReport Launches
By Rafat Ali - Wed 13 Feb 2008 12:46 PM PST
As we reported earlier this week, CNN’s ambitious citizen journalism site iReport.com has launched today. Less prominent CNN branding, which makes it interesting because of CNN/Turner’s efforts to develop it into a full-fledged destination/brand. Here’s what the site says about itself: “Don’t kid yourselves. This content is not pre-vetted or pre-read by CNN. This is your platform. In some journalisitic circles, this is considered disruptive, even controversial! But we know the news universe is changing. We know that even here, at CNN, we can’t be everywhere, all the time following all the stories you care about. So, we give you iReport.com. You will program it, you will police it; you will decide what’s important, what’s interesting, what’s news.” In other words, the right words, but tough to follow and manage. So we’ll see. In some senses, it is the video version of a cit-j site like NowPublic. More details in release.
The site has launched in beta for now and full launch is March. Besides the usual features, it has a coterie of super-reporters, which features top contributors as ranked by users. Worst thing: no embedding of videos allowed. What are they thinking?
Update: CNN’s response: It’s a beta—embedding isn’t ready yet but it’s coming soon.
Posted in: Companies, Time Warner, Turner, Social Media, News Sharing






