Have you got news for us?

http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,,1940127,00.html

This article is based on how channel Five and The Sun are going to allow the public to send stories to them through their website and then, if they use them on the news they would get paid £100. The stories could be anything from video clips and pictures taken on a mobile phone to important stories that you've heard about. This will all start next week.

The main idea of this was taken from Myspace but especially YouTube, however, the Channel Five senior pgrammer has pointed out that it will help to make a relationship and commitment between the audience and Channel 5. The authenticity of the flim clips is benefical for the news team and some sent in to the BBC are even better than their film crew's.

The Sun's big innovation is MySun which is an addition to the website and glorifies the news which users can comment on, which leads on to my opinion...

My Opinion:
I think this is a good idea in some ways because Channel 5 news would probably get most of their footage from the BBC so it will help them to improve. Also, its good that they have the audience's view in mind and sometimes, people in the right place at the right time so why not send in a video clip for £100. On the other hand, i think that this is maybe more because they want to up their standards in the competition of channels and news rather than "creat a ense of loyalty". Because this is a commercial channel, i can't help thinking that the only reason they are doing this is to increase their ratings.

Also, the Sun have implied that they are putting the stories in their newspaper and website purely because it is what they think the public will enjoy, not because they want to inform them of nuetral news. Therefore, this proves that The sun is a very biased newspaper and is purely for profit gains.

Another aspect which may go wrong is the public will be sending anything to the website that is not particularly useful just because they went the money. Money shouldn;t be an incentive to send a story, the person's devotion and interest to the story should be.