CNN to Launch iReport.com

CNN bought into the citizen journalism movement 18 months ago with iReport, but most user-created submissions have never made it to the site. Later this week, however, CNN will launch iReport.com, a site that will contain solely user-created content, from videos to photos to stories.

Unlike the iReport feature, however, the content on iReport.com will have no one vetting the content. Instead, it will be a wide-open format, and they've been marketing the new site to its frequent submitters. In other words, it's the equivalent of a news-related YouTube with a bit of Flickr and Digg thrown in for good measure.

Unfortunately, CNN seems only to have paid attention to the social parts of Web 2.0 in their planned implementation, and none of the problems. While users will be able to rate content as well as share submissions on their own sites, we will once again see everything up to the users, an issue that may undermine not only the site's credibility, but also the overall usefulness of the site.

As we've seen with Digg, there tends to be a mob mentality that establishes itself in any site that lacks an overall editorial control. Digg users recently protested a mere change to the algorithm that management hoped would provide a more balanced set of popular articles; has CNN even taken a look at sites like Digg?

The sites that have succeeded are those like Slashdot, which maintain control over submissions. No system is perfect, but taking the time to vet user contributions, screen them for inappropriate content, and assess their worth to the site, gives any news site a step up in being taken seriously as a valid news source.