The Beeb Online is asking people to write stories for them -- yet another sign the citizen journalism beast is rising.
Are you a witness to major, or lesser known, news events?
Have you seen an incident, or an event we missed, that you would like to tell us about?
Sayeth the Beeb Online's editor Pete Clifton:
Always good to take credit for a new initiative, but to be honest the first I knew about this was when it appeared on the site.
This kind of up front appeal for news stories, not necessarily linked to any big event we know about, is another bold bid for reader content. We have a long way to go - how to handle the emails we get sent, checking them out, allowing the reader to write the story, what help do we give? Lots of questions and I'll give you an update next week on how it is going - if anyone will tell me.
BBCi has a somewhat related beta project that's actually been around for a while: iCAN!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ican/
It seems to be a citizen's action website. In fact, iCAN will relaunch in July as Action Network.
Here's an earlier posting on citizen journalism.