KTBY in Anchorage, Alaska is adopting a new news gathering model that gives the people the power to shoot.
Coastal Television-owned station is transitioning to a citizen journalism newsroom. They are partnering with Fresco News, a company that allows people to gather news using their phone and an app, after a 10 month trial, according to a report in The Medium.
“We’ve had a lot of success with Fresco but needed to find a way to progress from single user-submitted videos to full packages of content,” said Scott Centers, Coastal Television Broadcasting Company’s chief operating officer. “The model that Fresco created for us allows the station to make far more assignments every day while staying within our budget. Eventually, with the exception of live content, all of our content will come from our viewers.”
According to the report:
Fresco has been connecting people on the street to news organizations all over the country since early 2016. Available for iOS and Android, app users receive location-based dispatches from local or national newsrooms. They can submit photos or videos, which are then immediately vetted and curated by Fresco’s 24/7 content team and put directly into the hands of producers at local news stations. Users are compensated and credited for photos and videos that are used on air.
KTBY is located in market 147.