Fox television stations and Fresco News partnered today to use Fresco’s Newsroom Tool Suite in local Fox owned stations in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Austin, Atlanta, Houston, Phoenix, Tampa, Charlotte and Orlando. It’s a way to use (and compensate) citizen journalist, which is a big move.
Fresco is an app that connects users to their local news stations. The newsroom puts out a location based assignment and users can submit videos and photos to be approved by the station. Fresco also has an around the clock content team that does some quality control on the submissions so the stations don’t get bogged down in the approval process.
The users receive $50 for each video and $20 for each photo used on air. Fox’s senior vice president for news operations, Sharri Berg says that it’s finally a good way to get user generated content on air. “We’ve been trying to do this the right way for years, but all that was missing were some ambitious 20-somethings and a simple app,” she said.
Millennials are apparently good for something.