Beyond CNN News Universe

The systems of news publishing over the Internet have gained an increased popularity especially in Web 2.0 era. But news without sources or resources of production cannot exist, in order to be published.

Many ideas of sharing information have been implemented in various forms, resulting websites which have the content published by an entire community of users. For example, video sharing websites like YouTube or bookmarking services websites gain the content based on users participation and they become a source of news based on the resources offered.

CNN comes with an original idea regarding the news creation and publishing. They launched the iReport.comwebsite where anyone can post news in an open manner because the submitted content is not verified or previewed by anyone before publishing. As a consequence, the entire news website content is controlled and managed by users. We can consider that iReport.com universe of news will change considerable the breaking news perception at the content, structure and impact level.

Based on the idea that the average Internet user could have access to breaking news sources by being in certain places before any professional journalist, iReport.com is an independent world where the website content, respectively the news, is published and created by the users with the help of a simple web browser based application having an easy to use interface. The content uploaded by users could contain videos, pictures, audio files. These files are accompanied by text that could be rich or plain. The news items are available to public through a classic search system or via certain tags.

In conclusion, we can say that the traditional journalism has a considerable concurrence in Internet spaces governed by Web 2.0 principles. Even more, regarding the CNN idea of opening another world of news created and managed by a community of users will definitely change the concepts of user generated content management as well as the traditional news definition.