Citizen Journalists Keep on Coming

There is a little bit of news, and a promise of more to come, over at Beet.TV about CNN’s latest UGC news effort: 

“Long providing an opportunity for viewers to send in videos, text messages, camera phone videos, comments and photos through an area called iReport, CNN.com has launched a true consumer generated news portal.  It has its own url as ireport.com” 

And PSFK has a cool post about a project run by the BBC to get young people into becoming reporters: 

“News School Report is the BBC’s initiative to encourage 11-14-year-olds to become interested in journalism and the news. The BBC offers children fromUK schools the chance to make their own video, audio or text-based news at school and to broadcast it for real, with the website becoming a live channel for one day. Launched last year with 120 schools and 3,000 students participating, the successful initiative streamed nine hours of school-based activities and pupils’ news reports, and this year has involved more than 10,000 students from over 250 schools across the country who are all readying themselves for their deadline- of 2pm GMT today, 13th March. ” 

This sort of stuff just gets me excited.  Just think about how many cameras are out there – and the number must be growing exponentially.  It is going to become very hard to hide from view.  While we all worry about whether “Big Brother” is watching, I have a feeling the real threat/reward will come from millions of “Little Brothers” all over the world.And the world will be watching.