Expansion of Citizen Sources

An Associated Press story by Brett Zongker reports on the $4.1 million grant to the American Public Media awarded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to expand its network of “citizen sources”. This expansion would help citizen sources to provide more direct news coverage to local media outlets throughout the county.

In our expansive world of media coverage, accurate coverage of breaking news can be hard to find. This is where citizen sources come into play. While they are not paid for their contributions, citizen sources can have a huge impact on story coverage. Citizen sources may provide tips on breaking news to reporters, or in some cases may even write a story which journalist will seek permission to publish.

Zongker interviewed Joaquin Alvarado, vice president of digital innovation for American Public Media. Alvarado had the following to say regarding citizen sources:

“In some cases, Public Insight drives very forward-facing reporting or special feature or interactive magazines.”

This is the exact purpose of the grant. The goal is to add 100,000 more individuals to the citizen sources network to better help capture the collective intelligence of society.

Not only this, but the grant will also be used to expand upon mobile news applications to process information from sources more quickly.

The American Public Media is focused on recruiting citizen sources from all backgrounds to add a more diverse field of sources.