ABC News, in a new joint venture with AOL News, will increase their use of citizen supplied video journalism. Viewers will be able to contribute text and mobile phone video segments that comment on news events of the day.
Mobile phone video can be submitted to www.abcnews.com. ABC News anchors will answer viewer questions through video responses, which will be posted on ABCNEWS.com and AOLNews.com, the companies said.
Neighborhood America in Naples, FL, is providing the technology and service for the ABC/AOL initiative, called “Seen and Heard in America.” It is based on a Web-based solution that enables a news team to capture video and text content, moderate and review the submissions and integrate selected content into their news process to enhance news coverage.
Called Neighborhood America’s Public Comment Service, the system enables organizations to collect large amounts of information from the public in a structured and organized manner. The mobile video is delivered to ABC via software such as a Service (SaaS) model, which means that it is a hosted service.
The SaaS model used by Neighborhood America is designed to eliminate the security risks — including viruses and spam — associated with traditional e-mail programs. It also relieves the news organization of the burdens associated with storing, maintaining and protecting the data.
