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Thursday, March 10, 2016

Fox To Integrate Citizen Journalists

Fox Television Stations has become the first major media outlet to employ citizen journalists.

The NY Post reports the broadcaster has partnered with Fresco News, a crowd-sourced news startup that has signed up hundreds of citizen journalists in cities across the country.

The partnership went active on Wednesday and Fox-owned stations in 11 markets — including New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco — will use Fresco’s Newsroom Tool Suite to gather stories.

Fresco’s app, which connects people on the street to newsrooms, notifies citizen journalists who have signed up for the app of open assignments from a local TV station.

Those who pursue an assignment can then submit photos or videos to Fresco, which are quickly vetted by its content team and passed on to the station’s producers.

Fresco receives $75 for each video and $30 for each photo chosen for on-air use. It forwards two-thirds of this revenue ($50 per video and $20 per photo) to the citizen delivering the content.


Fresco and Philadelphia’s Fox 29 began testing the collaboration in February, producing results that beat the expectations of station news director Jim Driscoll.

“We’d been talking about citizen journalism for years,” Driscoll told The Post. “But we didn’t act on it until our vision and Fresco’s model met at the crossroads.”

For example, before dawn on March 7, Fox 29 sent out a Fresco alert about a fire in Moorestown, Penn. — a 20-minute ride from the station. The station instantly received “great video of a huge fire,” Driscoll said, whereas crews dispatched by its competitors were lucky to get “smoking embers” by the time they arrived.

And, as a bonus, the news director sees Fresco contributors becoming loyal station viewers as the community wakes up to the idea that their local TV station has gone interactive.

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