Today citizen journalism site AllVoices is launching news bureaus in 30 additional countries. They say the bureaus are to be staffed by a hybrid force of professional and citizen journalists.
New countries represented include Iraq, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Egypt, India, the Philippines and Armenia.
Reports make their way up through a system in which the most popular stories are forwarded up levels from country to region to front page. Each city represented by the Global News Desk has a landing page which features local news.
“Likewise each country and continent has their own landing page,” said Aki Hashmi, AllVoices Chief Marketing Officer. “An algorithm promotes the best of the city page to the country page and the best of the country page to the continent page. Finally, the best of the continent page will be promoted to the Allvoices front page.”
According to AllVoices, 300,000 journalists and citizen journalists contribute to the service and serves and audience of 4.5 million. Citizen journalism site Demotix, by contrast, claims 14,00 members in 110 countries, though it acts as much as an agency as a news site. NowPublic claims it serves, and is served by citizen journalists in, 6,000 cities in 160 countries for five million monthly readers.
