• The New York Times, Tuesday, December 5, 2006 11 AM

A new demand for citizen journalism has come right on the heels of the user-generated video boom. Just yesterday, Reuters and Yahoo announced that anyone with a digital camera or a camera phone could submit pictures and video of news events, to be placed throughout Reuters.com and Yahoo News.

Reuters said it would also start to distribute some of the submissions to the thousands of print, online and broadcast media outlets that subscribe to its news service. It also hopes to develop a site comprised completely of user-submitted photographs and video.

"There is an ongoing demand for interesting and iconic images," said Chris Ahearn, president of the Reuters media group. Reuters and many other news organizations have always bought newsworthy pictures from "stringers," individuals and part-time contributors, but as Ahearn said,this is like seeing the whole world as potential stringers. The Yahoo-Reuters program is called "You Witness News."

Yahoo and Reuters certainly won't be the first news partnership to extend the offer to citizen journalists--though it may the biggest, as Yahoo News is the most widely-read news service on the Web, according to comScore Media Metrix. Blogging has been around for years, as have user-contributions to local newspapers. Earlier in the year, CNN and the BBC began both began soliciting user submissions.

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