In the final season of HBO’s “The Newsroom,” the ACN senior staff can’t stand the thought of crowed-sourced video taken by anyone who whips out a smart phone at the opportune time to record news.
Well, a real-live news organization is giving users the ability to do just that.
TVNewser attended an exclusive look at the NBC News-owned Stringwire at 30 Rock in NYC Monday, where founder and product lead Phil Groman and SVP/GM Mark Graham demonstrated the product for a small group of media.
Stringwire is a live video streaming service that crowdsources user-generated content from eyewitnesses at the scene of breaking news. Users can whip out a smartphone and record live, breaking news footage in a matter of seconds. All videos are monitored, and a seven-second delay helps ensure only factual, appropriate video makes the service.
Charlie Skinner would not be pleased, but millennials could see this at the future of news.
NBC does not pay streamers, but the user will be attributed whenever possible and owns any content they personally shoot. Stringwire videos could pop up on MSNBC at anytime and producers can actually communicate with users in the field if they to request something, such as a “pan to the left.”
People have “a real sense of civic duty,” Groman said when asked why people would contribute content without compensation. Stringwire is free and “focused on growth and news-gathering,” Gorman said before adding “in the future we have multiple ideas on how we can potentially monetize.”
NBC News is also encouraging its staff, especially field producers, to use the app.
“Live streaming is still relatively new,” Graham says. “It’s kind of like the way social media was maybe 10 years ago, where few people are doing it. People are saying ‘why would I want to be Tweeting something?’”