Share: ‘Citizen Journalism’ Craze Is Back

By | March 9, 2016
 

App works as an “Uber-ization” tool to turn everyone into paid journalists, much as Uber turned many into taxi drivers.

User-generated content has been slowly creeping into newscasts for years, but now Fox Television Stations is aiming to accelerate the practice with an app that lets the station group assign citizen journalists to happenings about town and then pay them for pictures and/or video from the scene.

[Fresco founder-CEO John Meyer] said that WTXF has made 150 assignments so far, but neither he nor Driscoll would say how many people have downloaded the app or been paid for content.

Fresco is more than an app. It operates a 24/7 newsroom in New York that checks assignments before they go out for accuracy and safety and then verifies the incoming content before making it accessible to the client, Meyer said.

The process is simple, he said. The producer at the station puts out a call for coverage — the assignment — using the Fresco website. That involves “dropping a pin on a map” and supplying a few details about what’s going on — be it a fire, accident or county fair.

“Once that assignment is posted, our newsroom will approve it within a minute or two and then, boom, our users with smartphones nearby are instantly notified,” Meyer said. “They travel to the scene and get the station on-demand video and photos in the matter of minutes.”

Stations actually pay $75 per video and $30 per still, but Fresco rakes off a third from each for its troubles. Users input a bank account number in the app, and payments are made directly to the account.

Full version: http://www.tvnewscheck.com/article/92960/fox-turns-viewers-into-stringers-with-app

App website: https://www.fresconews.com/