When Los Angeles Times editor Michael Kinsley agreed to allow citizens to “edit” an opinion piece, wiki-style, it resulted in some censor-less comments that sunk the bold journalistic experiment. Poynter’s Steve Outing recently posted a telling tutorial outlining the ways in which a newspaper can immerse itself in the world of citizen journalism.
New England Cable News (NECN), the all-news cable station in New England, will now dabble with the video version of Kinsley’s experiment, but in its news hole (versus on the opinion pages). Viewers are invited to submit video news stories. In this instant, however, a group of NECN editors will filter the submitted content before airing it. I wonder whether these video segments will undergo the same level of regulatory scrutiny that government or corporately-produced video news releases do?