Anything Editors Can Do, You Can Do Better

The citizen journalist revolution is in full swing these days. And as the news industry continues to adjust itself to an audience that increasingly prefers to get its news from the Web – the Web itself continues to accomodate an audience that wants more control over how news content is presented.

Enter Newsvine. The Seattle Post Intelligencer recently offered a preview of the soon-to-be-launched news site that "gives you almost all the same stories you read on sites like MSNBC and CNN but presents them in a much more attractive package," says Newsvine CEO Mike Davidson on his blog. Along with news stories from various outlets such as the Associated Press, that package will also include a substantial amount of contribution from viewers, who can submit their own stories as well as rank the site's news stories, creating a "reader-generated editing system that boosts the most popular articles to front page prominence," according to the Intelligencer. The site appears to expand on the same idea offered by sites such as Google News, where story selection is based on an algorithm and therefore remains untouched by editors' hands. But instead of an algorithm, "Newsvine uses the 'group intelligence' of readers," says the Intelligencer. Another Newsvine novelty, notes Davidson: "Getting your own column on Newsvine isn't only free but you'll also keep advertising earnings associated with traffic to your pages."

The site launches in the next two months ... we'll be keeping our Eye on it.