photo: sskennel/ BY

[Our Feature Spotlight focuses this week on Citizen Journalism.]

Part Two In A Series

In the first part of the Guide we checked out Demotix, CNN's iReport and YouTube's CitizenTube and Reporter's Center. Now we continue the rundown of marketplaces for user generated content with a look at a hyperlocal powerhouse, the viewer-created pioneer, and crowd-sourced muckraking.

Ground Report

[Speciality: Text]

Founded in 2006 by a former reporter on the United Nations Rachel Sterne, Ground Report was created to serve what Sterne saw as a dearth of global news coverage in the United States and the West in general. With International concerns and a "hyperlocal" focus, Ground Report seeks to live up to its name by featuring community reported news from around the world. Reporters are paid for their work, with compensation based on site traffic so that a story may earn anything from a few cents to a few hundred dollars. The site has strict guidelines regarding original content, fact-checking, and a lack of obsenities:

Posting false, pornographic, plagiarized, hateful or copyright-infringing content results in forfeit of all earnings.

Materials are released under Creative Commons licenses, with text based pieces receiving the focus of attention on the front page.

Current TV

[Specialty: Video]

Current was one of the pioneers in the world of user-genrated (or as they call it "viewer created") content. In 2005 former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and businessman Joel Hyatt launched the cable channel with the vision of a 24-hour news network produced and programmed by the viewers.

While the network does produce a fair amount of content in-house for cable broadcast viewer created content (VC2 in Current's parlance) remains a key feature. Becuase the end goal of most "pod" producers in the Current community is to have their videos voted onto the network's cable feed there tends to be a greater emphasis on production values than in other venues. Aspiring documentary filmmakers take note!

The network's own shows- like the film review program "The Rotten Tomatoes Show"- often feature webcam interactions from viewers, so even those who don't have dreams of becoming the Internet's Edward R. Murrow can play an active role in the programming.

The Huffington Post's Eyes and Ears

[Speciality: Investigative Journalism]

The HuffPost's citizen jouranlism unit takes a slightly different tack. While Eyes and Ears will take submisisons on any topic, the program has an expressed focus at the timeof this writing of the human impact of the global econmic meltdown. In addition, Eyes and ears is organized around theconcept of an Assignment Desk and Investigative Units- which drill down into specific topics. The investigative units are a great place for someone who has the stamina for research, and who cares more about helping to put together the Big Picture than just making themselves heard.

If you fancy yourself being part of a team that might just break the next big pubic policy story or corruption scandal, then Eyes and Ears might be for you.

Also on the site today: Notes From A Citizen Journalist.