Inside CNN’s iReport
Poynter’s Craig Silverman writes about CNN’s iReport…
The protests that erupted in Nigeria earlier this month over skyrocketing fuel prices initially received only a small amount of coverage from North American media, including CNN.
But CNN’s iReport team soon began seeing a steady stream of photos, videos and on the ground reports submitted by users in Nigeria. It became clear they couldn’t ignore the story.
“CNN wasn’t really covering that story at all until we started seeing an outpouring of contributions of video and photos and people writing into iReport over and over for days,” said Lila King, participation director for CNN Digital. “It made us say, ‘Gosh, you know we really need to be paying attention to this.’ ”
The result was increased coverage on CNN properties featuring the material submitted by a range of Nigerian citizens and freelancers.
This is iReport’s fifth anniversary, and a CNN spokesperson calls it “the most developed and active citizen journalism platform of any news organization worldwide.” It claims 1,002,428 registered iReporters, and 2.4 million unique users each month. King said iReport has had content submitted from every country on earth.
