Yahoo to Sponsor Citizen Journalism

Red Herring reports that Yahoo is planning a new citizen journalism website where users can upload their own videos or camera phone pictures immediately from the location of an incident.

The terrorist attack of the July 7 London bombings is what inspired Yahoo to pursue the venture, as average citizens provided material instantly seen around the world.

Yahoo News, one of the world’s most popular news aggregation sites, plans to launch a citizen video-journalist news service at the end of June that will act as a collection and publication site for news videos generated by the public.

Sources involved in discussions with Yahoo News said the project, which has been in development for months, will introduce an upload capability that will take the PC out of the connectivity loop, so amateur video journalists can upload footage directly from the location of the event.

The idea for the citizen journalist site was inspired by the aftermath of London bombings a year ago, where a series of coordinated suicide bombings struck London's public transport system during the morning rush hour on July 7.

Dramatic photos taken by average citizens with cell phone cameras lent an aura of immediacy to the dramatic events. Photos and videos of the smoke-filled subway cars circled the world on the day of the event (see Londoners Post Attack Images).